DeadWar
by Mabus101
Summary: Years ago I began a story set post-"Not Fade Away", a disturbing tale about what happens when a Slayer becomes a vampire-and tries to continue the good fight. Eventually that story ground to a halt, but I never gave up on one day finishing it. Today DeadWar begins again.
1. Shadow Sun

For your reading pleasure...this is the fic that began DeadWar.

Standard Boilerplate Disclaimer: None of the characters in this work of fiction belong to me; they are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I am making nothing from this fic except perhaps a reputation.

Rating: R for violence (Yes, I mean that. This is vicious stuff.)

 **If the radiance of a thousand suns**

Killing barely requires a thought any more, for Buffy. A twitch of the fingers. A flick of the wrist. Bared fangs sunk into the neck. How long has it been since she had to reach for a weapon? Perhaps two years...a little more, maybe. Sometimes she does so anyway, for nostalgia's sake. Or for a challenge. Easier, now, to seize hold of a head and rip it free to the grate of snapping bone and tearing ligament. Easier still to merely drink, to drain the body in what she might once have called the beat of a heart. Rare, any more, for a blow to strike her even once while she feeds.

It's hardly worth the effort. More fun to dance and weave among the bodies. More fun to swirl a blade, to make it hiss and crack. Buffy's hand shoots out, finds a pumping heart and crushes it to pulp. Buffy's foot leaps up to shatter a skull. Buffy's teeth seize a bone and rip it free as she flickers backwards. Buffy's form blurs. Buffy's mind blurs, shading the world in red haze. Pain is the point. Death is the point. She has always known this, somewhere in the back of her thoughts. Fear, guilt, and shame were all that prevented her from acknowledging the fact. All three are strangers to her now.

The cries of her victims sing in her ears, in her heart, in the absence where her soul was. All too soon, though, the screams fade to silence. Challenge has become too rare. At times, even, she finds herself wishing for the old days. Wishing to face Glory again, or the Mayor in the form of Olvikan. Wishing to face anything that might risk her unlife and thrill her blood. It would almost be pleasant to reacquaint herself with fear.

Buffy slows. One dance has ended. Another, slower tune throbs softly in her brain as she gathers one of the corpses into her arms. An older tune, the reason she trudges on through the monotony of unlife. There is only so much pain one can wring from a body. True, infinite suffering springs from the mind. No. From the soul.

 **Were to burst forth at once in the sky**

Death has followed Buffy around the world, but she has yet to leave the part that calls itself "civilized". Spain, China, Turkey...nowhere off the beaten path. Nowhere from which she cannot return in a month's time. She has an appointment to keep. This is the structure that gives her existence meaning.

Buffy sprints through the darkness, with the body lolling over her shoulder. She can tire, in theory, though it's been a long while. The creature she has become can run all night, fight till the sun rises, and never know fatigue, so long as she keeps herself well fed. Tonight she is far too near her goal for rest to be an issue.

Not long after midnight she reaches his doorstep. Across it she lays the body, arranging its limbs just so. Not enough to simply drape it there. Buffy wrenches an arm behind its back, pulls till the spine arches, tilts back the head, gapes the mouth in a cry of anguish. By itself the body is without meaning. Buffy takes the photograph from her pocket and tapes it to the unmoving chest. Human faces, laughing, oblivious to fear and pain alike. She scrawls her taunt on the back, the one she always leaves her ex.

Buffy stands, studying for a few more seconds. Angel could perhaps be inside. All that she has done here has been accomplished in less than a minute; were she to relent, he might never know she was here. Buffy has no intention of relenting, though. Not ever.

She turns from the scaly corpse and fades into the night. Other nights the bodies have borne horns, claws, fangs. Ridges on the forehead. Three times she has left urns of dust and ashes-the last from perhaps thirty vampires culled in one night. And the mocking photographs of the innocents she has saved. Each time, the same message.

 _I can._

 **That would be like the splendor**

In blood, life. Flavor sizzles down her gullet like the dizzying plummet of rollercoaster cars. Before blood, there was nothing. Buffy roots at her victim's neck, drawing out the feeding, seizing each moment. Vibrations tickle her fangs as he moans.

 _If she doesn't stop, Angel is proven right. About himself. About her._

Buffy never wants this to end, except the way she could end it-one last eruption of blood into her mouth as she drains him all at once. Her stomach clenches at the thought of letting him go. The demon underlying her mind rebels.

 _If she kills this one, Angel's pain eases._

It would be so easy. Shift her bite a fraction, sink her teeth into the jugular or the carotid. Draw on him with all her might and drain him like a child's shake. To kill him...to kill him would be right. Would be her right. This is the prey she deserves.

 _If he dies...Angel wins._

Buffy wrenches free of him, mouth dripping crimson. The wound screams for her to come back, finish her meal. The man huddled beneath her shivers and gasps as the _(pain/pleasure)_ subsides. "Don't...don't stop." His lips, his eyes, her gut, all begging for her to return. But she doesn't.

She rises off him. It's the most jaded who ask for her, the ones ready to skirt the very fringe of death. She's tried turning them down before, only to find she was the last reason they had to live. Since then, it no longer worries her to take from them. Buffy gestures to the assistants to help him rise and turns to the door. "Next." Better, she supposes, to feed from those willing to give than to take bagged blood from those waiting to receive. It tastes better anyway.

Buffy has tried feeding from animals. Their blood is flat, listless. After a week the hunger pains give way to weakness and trembling. Another three days once left her disoriented; it was the closest she has come to killing a human. She has no qualms about draining vampires until they crumble to dust in her hands, an event once unheard of outside of ritual. But vampire blood, already used once, resembles a sugar high-powerful, but pointless in the long run.

She has made certain Angel knows she lacks certain options he had. His torture is the sole point of her unlife. If she can be good without a soul...then so could he have. Every life saved drives the knife deeper into his gut; every demon killed twists it harder. Buffy no longer experiences the torment of guilt, but she remembers. She would choose one drop of Angel's guilt over an ocean of spilled blood.

 **Of the Mighty One**

They shy away from the thing she has become, human and vampire patrons alike. A gothgirl in leather shivers unconsciously as Buffy passes; her black-clad businessman bares fangs, hisses, pulls her closer. Buffy ignores the implied challenge. Those who come here-while not precisely safe from her-are the least thing on her mind. She prefers bigger game.

As well, threadbare though her truce is, making trouble here would prompt them to ban her. Buffy has no concerns that they could bar her way physically, but the operation could close its doors, or they might seek out magical assistance. She has never been good at fighting magic, though the anti-possession meditations Giles taught her have proven effective in a way he could hardly have imagined. At this distance, not even Willow seems able to break through her shields. Just as well; a soul would compromise her revenge on Angel. Willow seems not to understand; every so often Buffy must fend her off again, always a new permutation of the magicks. Necessity has made Buffy adaptable, but a mystic ward here would no doubt strain her capabilities.

All the same, the space that opens up around her has become smaller of late. She has no illusions that they are becoming used to her. Their numbers are growing; the able-bodied have begun appearing along with the weak and the young. None of them have any real age on them, not yet, but perhaps in time. If that happens, Buffy supposes she will have to stop ignoring these places; elder vampires are still worth fighting for the fight's sake. A swirl of...something...flickers through her perceptions, familiar and peculiar at once. More and more often, lately. She knows where Angel is. She knows Spike is dust. These are...something else.

"Why?" interrupts her thoughts. How long has it been since someone has surprised her? Buffy comes to a halt; the scrawny, unkempt boy on her left throws her an uncertain sneer. "You're not like us. You're strong. You could have anything you want. Anyone. No one asked you to come here and take our meal tickets. How do you make yourself live this way? Why even try?"

What does he expect her to tell him? She could explain her vengeance in detail and he would not understand a word of it. Buffy's previous attempts have produced only blank stares or amusement. The latter generally results in a decapitation; she will not risk wanting to do that here. If even one understood...perhaps it would make a difference to the world. Or just as likely, not. She shrugs carelessly. Gives him the only answer she knows to give. "Because it's wrong."

 **I am become Death**

Buffy knows before she enters. Her crypt is spartan, lacking even a cot. The floor is enough, when she is full. When she is not full, a bed is no help. The interloper has taken a seat by the refrigerator that, every now and then, holds blood. She goes on paging through one of Buffy's paperbacks, not looking up, though clearly she has heard the arrival. Most likely she does not realize whose space she is intruding on.

Calling it a fight would be too generous. Buffy has her by the arm before the other vampire can rise. She has never really understood how one knocks a vampire unconscious; she knows only that blows to the head work as they ought. Quite possibly the intruder never realizes she has been found before darkness claims her.

Buffy has contingencies for this sort of thing. A good crypt is hard to find, and vampires are not known for respecting each other's territories, save out of fear. Of course, the locals have long since stopped bothering her, but newcomers appear from time to time. And then there are other needs, too. Buffy chains her to the rectangular metal frame-once part of a bed-that she has adapted for this purpose. An older vampire might be able to break the cuffs, or the frame; Buffy certainly could. She can sense, though, that this one is young.

She retrieves a knife from her collection. Far too many of her weapons from before were left behind, after the change, but she has a few of them. Most have been confiscated from recent enemies. A handful are magical-the latest attempts to stop her have become increasingly imaginative-but for now all Buffy needs is a sturdy, jagged blade.

Buffy thrusts it into the base of the girl's neck, wrenching her awake with a cry of pain. Screams always give her that warm fuzzy sensation, although they're not exactly conversation. It's been a little while since Buffy had a chance to really talk with anyone. "Never got into Coleridge, myself, but I decided I had plenty of time now to figure him out." Buffy's tone is all smiles. And why not? She's not the one trapped. "Hope you enjoyed your reading. You won't be doing any more of it." She gives the blade a stout, downward tug that draws a thick, bloody line down the girl's shoulder.

The wails end, eventually. There's no use in inflicting more pain before then; best to enjoy each bite separately. "Buffy. I came. To help you." She tries not to sag in her chains, knowing pain will overpower any relief she might gain from rest. Buffy slides around the girl from the left, one brow raised in mild interest. "Angel asked me."

"Oooh. That's a good one." Buffy smirks, briefly and faintly. No one's tried to play the Angel card before.. "Too bad for you I don't need your help." Though the girl does remind her of Angel. She's got that earnest look to her, as though she were truly concerned. She always finds the concerned ones amusing. When she was human, they'd have torn out her throat if they could; now, suddenly, she's a sister they want to help. Hypocrites.

The intruder struggles to focus her thoughts, forcing the hard ridges to retreat from her forehead, withdrawing the fangs. "Swear it. Came to help. I know...you know me." But Buffy slides around to the right, taking the reddened blade in her hand with her. The face is familiar, but then...so what? Neither of them are the same people they were. Neither of them are people at all. With a grimace, Buffy grinds the knife deep into her captive's other shoulder.

"Someone like me knew someone like you. Once." The intruder fights not to convulse. Sometimes vampire strength is a liability. It would be possible to tear off her own arms. Buffy's seen that happen before, every once in a while. She's always wondered why the broken-off pieces don't turn to dust. "Ever wonder what decapitation really means? What the boundaries are? I do." She slices the blade down the softer tissues of the girl's back, beside her spine, stopping above a rib. "Can't say I know you. Don't particularly care to."

The intruder keeps trying, though. Buffy has to give her credit for stamina. "Don't...you feel it? Know you...feel it." Feel what? Compassion? Mercy? Pity? Someone's been reading Anne Rice again. Though an actual undead monster ought to know better.

She remembers who the face belongs to, now. What Buffy does feel is amusement-detached, ironic. "I remember you wanted to be a vampire once. Guess you figured it was freedom. Didn't stop to think about the rest." The knife digs, grinding against bone. "How nothing anyone does to you can matter. I could peel you like an apple. I could take you apart joint by joint. I could rip your clothes off and ride you till you're a mass of bruises. Not that you're my type, but hey...eternity, meet boredom." Serrated edges begin to saw. "Point is, you're not a person anymore. Just a thing. You're no one."

The rib snaps at its base, setting her to writhing no matter how hard she tries to stop. Drat. Buffy may have to give the girl's limbs time to reattach, and by then the rest of the healing will be done and they'll be back where they started. But the intruder damps her struggles to a shudder in time to prevent disaster. Her lips twitch as she struggles to draw breath. She still wants to talk? More credit, for now, but eventually Buffy will have to start marking her down for stupidity. "Got it back. My soul. Buffy...I'm really me. I'm Anne."

 **Destroyer of Worlds**

Fascinating. Buffy favors her with a thin smile. Usually her play is not so interesting. "Now what could possibly have persuaded you to do that?" She tosses the knife onto the bookcase for now. Let the girl think she's getting somewhere. "Was it worth it? Cry yourself to sleep much? How are the nightmares?" Buffy can guess what it's like. She killed humans, once or twice, when she was one of them. Circumstances never matter.

"It was worth it. You, you don't understand...what's been happening...do you?" Anne tries to moisten her lips, but her tongue is just as dry. There's only so much fluid in a body. Sometimes Buffy wonders where all the blood goes. "Things are changing, Buffy. You can come home. I told you...we want to help."

"You want to make me suffer? You call that help?" She knows what Angel went through, and Spike after him. She's seen the misery. Misery is what Buffy inflicts...not what she experiences herself, or ever wants to. The knife whispers to her to resume the cutting. She wants to know.

"The sooner you come, Buffy, the less it hurts. We know you haven't killed anyone." The girl gives her a questioning look-not even whether it's still true, but merely how Buffy did it. As if that weren't obvious. "Would you believe Harmony started it? She actually begged Willow on her knees. Anything that would make her safe from you. After that, it...spread." As if Buffy didn't already know. "There's a dozen covens practically mass-producing those Orbs of what-do-you-call-it. It's not just that, either. Chad turns away fledges, and nine out of ten still don't make it through the challenges, but he's opening up a franchise in Mexico anyway. You'd be good publicity...it'd be a breeze for you. You really didn't know, did you?"

Buffy sighs and picks up the knife. "Is that what you think?" She remembers catching up to Drusilla at last. Those were good times. "You be in me," Buffy told her, and started with the eyes. Seven days, it took, before there was too little left of Dru to scream. Buffy shakes her head. "That I haven't noticed? You really believe I can't tell? I've known from the beginning."

Anne tries to draw away as the blade approaches her neck. "Please, Buffy. Don't you understand what you've done? We're more afraid of you than guilt. We're more afraid of you than hell." The serrations come to rest, whisper-light, across her spine from the incision already there. "You've won."

If she won...the fighting would be over. Buffy drives the blade deeper this time, piercing the larynx, shutting off all but whimpers. "And you want me to come get my prize. My soul." If she peels out the entire spine...does that count as a decapitation? "You're the one who doesn't understand." Perhaps when she severs the nerves that lead to the heart. Or will she get to slice away the vertebrae one by one? "Souls don't matter." Cutting downward, milking blood and sobs and terror. Buffy is still the Slayer. She'll always be the Slayer. Kill demons. Save the innocent. "I'm the proof."


	2. Damn Nation

Disclaimer: I am making not a penny from this. All characters belong to Joss/Mutant Enemy/whoever.

Rating: PG-13

Setting: Post-"Shadow Sun", roughly two years after "Chosen".

"I have no name in the regions which I inhabit," replied the voice, mournfully; "I was mortal, but am fiend. I was merciless, but am pitiful. "

-"The Premature Burial", Edgar A. Poe

Fighting evil just doesn't pay. But then, that's not why she does it.

Blond hair streaming behind her, she careens through the cemetery, dodging crumbling grey marble and the sagging branches of ill-placed trees. The latter are by far the more dangerous. A careless girl could stake herself on those. She has to not be careless. Not being careless is hard, though; impulsiveness is part of both her natures. A running leap carries her over the great bulk of a mausoleum, where she crumples to the ground, hidden from view. Moments later, her pursuers appear around the side, approaching more cautiously. She supposes they're afraid of her. It wouldn't be the first time she's been mistaken for something she's not.

She lashes out in a rising side kick, toppling the greasy-looking fellow on her left. Some people use being dead as an excuse to totally lose their fashion sense. This loser probably never had one to start with. She slams him and his lame-ass tie-dyed t-shirt against the mausoleum wall. "Where'd you get that thing? Wal-Mart? No way you were buried in it." Don't they bury guys in a suit and tie, even if they were some kind of trailer trash? He snarls back at her. "Look, stupid, if you're going to make trouble, you really ought to pick on a fledgeling or something. I'm a master vampire, you know." Well, sort of. "I'm way stronger and faster than..." Something hard slams into her back. She'd half-forgotten about the other two. Witty banter just takes up too much of her attention.

It could be worse. She's not falling apart in little bits of blow-away dust. It'd have been a crime to let this ensemble go that way, after all the trouble she went to. She spins around, keeping the greasy vampire locked in her grip. She's not totally stupid, after all; let him soak up the punches.

"Traitor," growls some chick with curly red hair. "You think having a soul makes you better than us, but you're just as much a monster as we are. You're just conflicted about it." She reverses the wooden club she's holding and drives a pointy end into the hostage who was her buddy five seconds ago. Well, so much for that strategy. "That makes you weak."

Aww...come on! "Hey! You have no idea how hard I've fought to get this soul and keep it." After the third time she had to go crawling back to Willow, whimpering about how much trouble and danger she was in, she finally had to ask people to stop giving gifts. Not being able to squeal over her latest bit of sparkly jewelry makes her miserable. If only that weren't the point. "If you're so tough, why don't you see how you handle one?" She holds her head up as proudly as she can manage with her hair full of scratchy twigs. "I've seen big mean football players stake themselves 'cause they can't handle an itty-bitty bit of guilt. Don't you get how totally lame that is? I mean, if I can manage one..." Harmony tries to put on a convincing sneer. These aren't terrified fledges scurrying from the new Big Bad...or is that Big Good? (It's awfully hard to tell.) They meant to kill her because they thought she was Buffy. Which makes them real idiots. Nobody can kill Buffy. And now that they've realized she's not Buffy, they want to kill her for having a soul, which is even dumber. Souls hurt. They hurt a lot. But they keep Buffy's stakes out of your heart. Better to be miserable than dusty.

She's let herself get distracted again. How does Buffy do it? Vampire number three thwacks her on the head with his own club. He's a shrimpy little geek. For a moment she's tempted to make fun of him, but he probably passes for the brains of this outfit. That's what geeks are good for, after all. Maybe she can persuade him to take on a soul. He lunges for her, grumbling something under his breath about cheerleaders. No fair! So she grabs his arm and slams him into the redhead. "C'mon, four-eyes. Like you said...cheerleader." Harmony leaps into an aerial flip; it's so much easier than when she was human. At the top of it she snaps off a pair of long, pointy branches hanging overhead. "You can't take a cheerleader with moves like that, loser." Now she's angry. Screw ensouling these morons, if they're going to insult her. She stakes the geek on the way down. She tries to stake the redhead, too, but the improvised weapon misses the heart and merely pins her to the ground. The girl lets out a whimpering sort-of snarl and struggles free, staring around as if expecting her stupid little gang to rematerialize.

Harmony's not really out to kill tonight. Not if she doesn't have to, anyway. Being a vampire is hard. Maybe the redhead will get that now. "Hey, look...you don't have to go on like this. I mean, it's no fun having a soul, but it's no fun being alone and having everyone hate you, either. Really...no hard feelings." She reaches out a hand. It's more of an offer than the girl deserves, but hey...forgiveness, right? And the more vampires with souls, the better.

The redhead promptly kicks her in the face. By the time Harmony picks herself up off the ground, she's scurrying away through the graveyard. Oh well. Maybe she'll think it over. Sometimes they do. Ugh...she's got to be such a mess now. Harmony pulls a hard little case out of her pocket and flips it open. The digital camera renders an image of her face. Scratches, bruises, stuff in her hair... Maybe she should get in on Andrew's little business venture while she can.

It'll pay more than fighting evil.

* * *

Giles had spent his life preparing for the death of his Slayer. All Watchers did. But somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten that training. He'd determined that he was not going to allow Buffy to die. Nor did he. The trouble, he supposes, is that death rarely seems to wait for one's permission.

The ghastly discovery that Buffy was not simply dead-that she was the first Slayer to be turned in perhaps a thousand years-had given him a sort of undefinable hope. Intellectually, he knew that the walking corpse was not...could not truly be Buffy. But, then, didn't the tales explain why such turnings were rare? That vampires knew the power that could result, and feared it? Perhaps, somehow, the Slayer nature lived on in some form...modified the demon...made it possible for it to serve the cause of good. That would explain Buffy's...the vampire's subsequent actions.

He might even have wanted to believe that-once, years before, when he'd been fresh from the Council and determined that Buffy would do as she was told like every other Slayer. Now, though...only Buffy, only the real Buffy can give him relief from his sorrow. And she never will.

Giles leafs cautiously through Planchard's Guide to the Spirits, careful lest he mar a page or blot the ink with his sweat. If it were truly Buffy...surely she would never resist the ensoulment. That she does so demonstrates as false what he already knows to be impossible. The creature with Buffy's face can never be Buffy. Not truly, not ever again. Even if they find the secret, wear down her shields, her body will always be cold; she will always share it with the demon that animates her form. Perhaps forever. None of their efforts to destroy her came near succeeding, not even once.

He sighs and puts the book aside. Another false lead. He has no time for this, not really. He'd always had difficulties with Quentin Travers, but the man's impersonal style had served a purpose. No one could lead an organization of such size without some measure of detachment; Travers had simply carried it too far. Giles cannot devote infinite time to any one individual. Not even to Buffy.

Giles needs numbers. Ideally, every Slayer should have a Watcher...a guide, a trainer, a confidant. But the order lies in ruins now, and even if it did not there were many members that he would never have wished on any girl. He has spent two years tracking down those he can trust and struggling to recruit new ones, but the former are difficult to find and the latter require almost as much training as Slayers themselves. There is simply too much to do.

He gets up to pace around the office. Wesley's office, not so terribly long ago. The Hyperion is quiet this time of night, the twenty or so Slayers-in-training who reside here patrolling or asleep. Willow tells him often that he does not sleep enough. He is only human, after all, and needs his rest. But sleep brings dreams...nightmares that, having filtered through into reality, return distorted to his unconscious mind.

On his second pass, the doorway has a woman standing in it. Giles stops, fumbling for words. "The door was unlocked," she informs him in a light tone. "I understand Angel Investigations helps the helpless?"

"It did. When it was located here. I'm afraid it's been closed down for three years." If not for that, this could be the classic opening of a detective novel, complete with femme fatale-albeit one not so slender or long-legged as the norm. Her shape, a bit fleshier than that, conforms more to older notions of beauty than to the modern, pencil-thin model. Wavy black hair has been pulled back into a loose braid almost to her waist. A disappointed frown crinkles her olive-brown face...but fails to truly touch her eyes.

"That's a real shame. I suppose I'll have to settle for the new headquarters of the Watchers' Council, then. Mister Rupert Giles, I presume?"

Startled, he offers her a hand, which she ignores. "I'm curious how you obtained the advantage of me. But yes, I am he. Please...take a seat." Watchers have been filtering in over the course of months, but this woman resembles none of the people in his files. Of course, the Council has always had its shadier operatives...but he has no real wish to take them on, and has not attempted to contact them. Their functions were typically darker than he has any desire to revive.

He resumes his own seat behind the desk, looking up to see she has taken this offer, at least. "Sadha Kaur," she informs him, her tone pleasant, if a little curt. "I'm afraid I left the Council after the death of my Slayer. I try to keep tabs, however, as far as possible." He knows precisely how far that is-not very-but it explains her presence, at least. And his name, at least, is known, odd though it is that she recognizes his face.

"Then I understand your pain...ah, Ms. Kaur. Some traditions, however well-intended, are difficult to keep. I must admit, however, that I do not recall encountering your name in my researches, which have been rather extensive of late. I had thought that I knew the names of all surviving Watchers who have mentored a Slayer." His hand goes to the cabinet in his desk, thoughtfully. Perhaps he has simply missed her file somehow.

Sadha sighs gently. "It has been some time, I suppose. She died during the Third Rakshasa Uprising. After that...well, it simply wasn't possible for me to carry on." Her left hand worries at a strand of beads hanging around her neck, and she smiles as if at a small joke. "I became very, very upset with the Council."

It's his turn to frown now, though not with disappointment. "I don't see how that can be, Ms. Kaur. I'm quite certain that the Third Rakshasa Uprising happened in 1804. Or did I misunderstand you?" Giles bends down over the file drawer, seeking not papers but a weapon, just in case. There have been impostors seeking positions with him lately; one, even, that he hired after the deception was revealed. Regrettable, but some degree of skullduggery, he supposes, will always be a necessity of his calling.

"No, I believe you understood me," she states, with just a hint of lisp. Giles groans. The Hyperion is still a place of public accomodation. "I'm quite dead."

Negotiating. Who would have believed it?

* * *

Chao-Ahn struggles with the instinct warning her to lash out with the stakes in her belt loops. Another layer of sensation is telling her there is no need, but even that layer seems incredulous somehow. Ten vampires with souls, all in one room...she might as well expect to meet a dragon. But then, she reminds herself, she's seen one of those too.

"Surely you understand why we need to watch your movements," she begins in French. Not knowing English has always been an embarrassment to her, and so she has tried very hard, but the language is filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. How the Americans manage with it, she has no idea. If only France had kept Louisiana, it would have been so much easier for her in North America. Mr. Giles had gone an amusing shade of red when he discovered she was fluent. But what kind of fool did he think she was, to speak only one language when she grew up in Hong Kong?

"Of course!" snaps the light-haired woman to her left. "Naturally you must treat us like dangerous animals, after all that we went through to make you safe!" Soul or no soul, her demon visage struggles forward, a sign of anger. Ironic, that the young ones are so much more prone to that than the old. Short unlives of mostly following orders have left many of them relatively little guilt. Only one of those here has spent more than fifty years among the undead.

"I heard that it was to save yourselves," Chao-Ahn responds, "not for us at all." Believing the intense young woman from California has sent these ripples through the underworld is easy. So driven, so confident. It was imagining Buffy failing at anything that was difficult. Somehow, she must have failed, or she would be alive. "I thank you for it anyway, but yes, you are still dangerous."

The swarthy man on her right shrugs. "We did not seek out souls so that we could spend eternity in fear of you." His temper is more even, though she hears the tension in his voice. "Obviously we had hoped we would be safe. That you would trust us, now. Sooner or later the others, the unsouled, will turn on us, when they believe the danger to them has eased. We will need protection like anyone else."

Chao-Ahn shakes her head. "If only it were that simple. You have the proof that it is not." She glances at the blanketed figure lurking in the back of the room. "You still require blood to live. You still have the impulses that drive you to feed on us. We are pleased that you choose not to, but even humans kill at times, soul or no soul."

"Well, that much is clear," the woman mutters. "What about your impulses? You can't tell me you don't want to stick those things in our hearts. Don't deny it...you want us dead."

"You are dead," Chou-Ahn says softly, though not unkindly. "But you are not totally wrong. I merely point out that we have reason to fear each other, and offer ways to ease that fear, for both of our kinds' sakes."

The light-haired woman seems on the verge of offering another rejoinder, but frightened babbling erupts from the back of the room. Perhaps one day Chao-Ahn will grow used to seeing concern on a vampire's face, ridges or no ridges, but not today. "Just a moment," the woman says instead, and rises. Chao-Ahn waits patiently. She should feel no pity...but she does.

Determining a vampire's age is not an exact science, but from the corrugations on the forehead of the woman cowering against the wall, she might be as little as a century from losing her human face entirely. Far older than the others, their sire has no doubt bathed some corner of the world in blood-from elapsed time spent feeding, if nothing else. She huddles there, clutching wrinkled blankets so tightly that the pleats dig grooves in her flesh. Perhaps the physical pain is even a relief. Among the English words Chao-Ahn has learned to recognize are "sorry", "mercy", and "please"; she hears them over and over, now, mixed with a garble of other sounds that mean nothing to her. The vampires stroke their elder's back, her forehead, murmuring soothing words as if to a child. Chao-Ahn considers handing out a little mercy of her own. But would that make her no different from them?

Finally the blond woman returns to her seat. "Buffy did this to her," she intones. "She was more afraid of Buffy than...than this. Have you given any thought to that? My sire could tear you limb from limb, Slayer or not. Ask yourself what could possibly terrify her into going through with this...and then ask yourself how you can call what Buffy does good."

"I don't," Chao-Ahn answers, slightly embarrassed. "I won't make apologies for Buffy. She's...not our kind any more, though. She's yours." The response draws glares, and Chao-Ahn backs down a little. "Well, not only our kind. But everything your sire is going through now is far less than what she's earned. I admit to feeling sorry for her anyway, but she made her own decision, and now she has to live with it." A pause. "I won't stop her from living with it. For whatever that's worth to you."

The man takes a deep breath. "And we've made the decision to care for her. We couldn't endanger humans if we wanted to, not while she's like this. Elsbet takes up too much of our time for that."

Chao-Ahn nods. "I understand. But you need to understand as well. It's normal and natural for humans to be afraid of you. Most people can't tell you have souls. Even many Slayers can't." The vampires sigh resignedly; they recognize this as true. "The world is changing, and humans need time to adjust. We need...space," she concludes. "Space to breathe."

The blond vampire snarls, rising from her seat. Chao-Ahn begins to reach for a stake-she might be able to escape, at least-but the vampire paces away from her across the room. Several of the others turn to glare. Chao-Ahn frowns in confusion. Surely the pun wasn't _that_ bad.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The slow, steady cadence that divides life from death.

Gabriel doesn't need the overlay as humans do. He can hear the sound it was meant to represent, the steady thud of Michelle's heartbeat. He can hear the shallow wheeze of her breathing, too, and smell the fragrance of her sluggish blood, and see the heat that emanates from her body.

If only he could hear more. If only he could hear her speak.

They tell him her prognosis is poor. Despite the popular depictions of coma patients awakening after years of unconsciousness, those events are rare. Generally speaking, such people die never having opened their eyes again, never realizing what's become of them. It's not in any way fair, Gabriel thinks. To waste away like this...to wake, if at all, in a body years older, in a world perhaps changed beyond recognition. Michelle has been here for five years. It could be worse, of course. And almost certainly, it will.

All that time, he left her here. Never once bothered to look at her face, or kiss her forehead, or leave tears on her face. The doctors have accepted-reluctantly-his tale of amnesia, a peculiar ailment that can behave in unexpected ways. None of it is true, though. He knew the woman he'd loved was here. He just didn't care.

In that time, Gabriel had met vampires who were capable of love...or at least something that resembled it. Most often, among their own kind, usually between sire and spawn. Every now and then, affection for a human. Typically such attraction ended in the human being turned...but it was there. Otherwise, why transform one's lunch at all? He hadn't been among them, though. He'd woken to realize that his lover no longer meant more to him than any other warm, in this case rather tasteless, meal.

Oh, he'd given some thought to turning her. It was what his own sire had intended, after all. If not for the chance arrival of police-a misinformed drug raid-she might have been with him already. Instead, she'd been left for dead, lying there on the couch, just another discarded lunch wrapper. There were always other interesting humans to change, and being shot could hurt. And in the end, he'd decided the same thing his sire had. She wasn't worth the effort.

Gabriel wonders, now, if something had always been wrong with their love that caused it not to last. Was it so imperfect, so impure with guilt, that the loss of guilt erased it? Could it be that such things were determined by the human personality too? Or was it merely a function of the exact nature of each demon that occupied the body? He knows which one he prefers to believe. If only he could convince himself it was the truth.

He runs a finger along the curve of her lips, avoiding the feeding tube. The nurses come in from time to time, trying to keep her muscles stimulated...just in case she ever needs them again. Too much wasting away could mean her death, as well. They wouldn't want that. Losing a patient, no matter what the cause or circumstances, looks bad on their records. Wouldn't do to be sued for malpractice. Gabriel brushes his lips against the unblinking lids of her eyes. But this is not a fairy tale.

Can "sorry" make up for five years of neglect? Does it matter that she would never have known he was here? Can it really make so much of a difference that he wasn't himself? It must not, he realizes. Else it would make the same difference to the ones he's killed.

Gabriel holds her limp, warm hands in his cold, dextrous ones. He can feel the bones through her flesh. Her skin's pallor leaves it all but translucent...not so different from his own, really.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

It's only a heartbeat that lies between them, after all. Gabriel contemplates the machines that hold her here on the brink of life, and hates them for it. They can never heal her. He unclenches the fist he's made of his left hand, fingernails digging into his palm. Not sanitary, not at all. Especially not in a hospital, among the sick. Gabriel smooths the curly hair away from his love's waxen forehead, wishing her eyes could see his face. He clasps her hand, seeking forgiveness, if she can grant it to a thing like himself. He brushes his fingers along her lips once more.

And gently feeds her death.

* * *

Kennedy never warms the bed much. It's her metabolism, Willow supposes, slow for a Slayer. If Slayer powers have anything to do with metabolism. They never did figure that one out. Maybe she should try...but later. Right now she just wants to get out from under the cold sheets and get some breakfast.

She pads down the hall in her pjs. Most of the Slayers are in by now, sleeping. The sun may not have reached all the way down the long canyons to street level yet, but it's up. There are demons about, of course, but most of them aren't the sort that humans have to be afraid of. Those prefer the darkness. Easier to hunt at night. Willow hears sleepy grunts, mumbled complaints, a few snores. Slayers dream an awful lot. Part of the package. Kennedy's always waking her up with sleeptalk.

The offices downstairs are quiet; she starts to check voice mail for messages and sees a post-it note stuck to the fridge. Naturally. One day Giles is going to have to get the hang of voice mail, or they're all going to wake up dead. She means the thought as a joke, but it won't come out that way; her incipient smile turns upside down. Willow knows they could, in fact, wake up dead. Just like Buffy. Kinda takes the humor out of it.

Giles has gone out on business. That's all the note says. What kind of business would be nice to know...but they really don't need to, and if they did, at least he's probably taken a cell phone. Even Giles manages to move with the times, if not as fast as the rest of them. She supposes he's found another Watcher to bring into the fold. They're always in need of Watchers. Desperately in need, Willow admits to herself. There are times when she wishes she could take the spell back. But she's tried that, and the genie is out of the bottle for good. Not to mention what might just happen if it worked, and left only one Slayer; Willow suspects she knows who'd be left standing.

She ponders her options briefly and comes down in favor of ordinary cereal. Not the best start to a day, but Willow doesn't feel like cooking now. She can be perky later; right now she just feels sluggish and sleepy. Normally she doesn't wake this early, and for a moment she wonders what might have jolted her out of dreamland. But it was probably just Kennedy again.

Willow thinks Kennedy loves her, she really does. But, munching on her Weet-a-Bix, it's hard to say for sure that Willow loves her back. There's affection, no question, but not like with Tara, or even Oz. Kennedy is pushy. Kennedy is loud. Kennedy is obnoxious. And Willow has learned to tolerate these things, because she knows how valuable the relationship has been to her. The other woman helped her find her way back from the darkness after Tara's death, back to solid footing and usefulness to her friends. But those days...they're long over.

They'd argued again last night about Buffy. Kennedy just doesn't see what she sees-that Buffy, even if she can somehow manage to mean well, has gone much too far. From Kennedy's perspective, a demon is a demon, and it doesn't matter why Buffy kills them. Or how. Evil is evil, and that makes what Buffy does good. If she enjoys it...so much the better for her. It's a remarkably Faithlike perspective-the old Faith, the Faith who ended up working for Mayor Wilkins. And far too many of the new Slayers seem to agree with it.

Willow's seen what Buffy does, though, and Kennedy hasn't. Willow was there when Buffy...rescued her. At first it was easy to be angry at the vampire who'd caught her from behind and nearly sucked the life out of her. At first. But Buffy didn't stake him. Didn't twist his head off, or set him on fire. She dug her fingers under the creature's skin and began to eviscerate him, organ by organ. Humans could die from a great many things. Vampires, not so much. Willow knew every piece that Buffy pulled out of him-dried and desiccated, they were so much more like the pictures in an anatomy book than squishy living organs would have been. His liver. His lungs. His heart. And more and more, while he began to wail in agony and plead for death, while Buffy sneered into his face and told him his pain was illusion, everything he felt was a lie. Killer had become victim, then; predator had become prey. And Willow's fear of him had turned to horror for him. Even a little sympathy, before the end. She'd driven a pencil into his discarded heart, and done it out of mercy. And Buffy had glared at her as if Willow were an ungrateful piece of filth and stalked away.

Never mind that the vampire was a dead, soulless thing. He'd felt pain, felt fear, and Willow could never again believe otherwise. Kill them? Yes, when it had to be done. And it did have to be done, numbingly often. But torture them? No...not ever. Not ever again. So how can she love someone who can shrug off what Buffy does as harmless?

Willow has finished her cereal. She'd barely even tasted it. Not unusual, for someone so easily lost in thought. But probably not a good thing, either. There are all those studies on habitual eating and obesity and...

Something is scraping at the door. Or thumping, very very softly. It could be a cat, or a small puppy; there are way too many discarded pets in the city. It could be something else, too, something a lot less friendly. For some reason, the urban legend springs to her mind about the girl hiding in her car while her hanged boyfriend's shoes thump against its roof.

But it's daylight, now, and even if that daylight hasn't quite made it down to ground level there aren't going to be vampires roaming the city now. Not more than one or two, and certainly not scratching at the door of Slayer Central. Except maybe one of the handful of ensouled vampires that they know for sure is an ally. Harmony, maybe. Or Anne.

That doesn't make the slow thumping any less creepy.

She peers out the peephole and sees nothing. But the faint noise continues from the other side. So, keeping a eensy defensive spell on her lips, she whips the door open, ready for anything imaginable. Which, for her, is an awful lot.

Still nothing, for just an instant. And then something rolls against her feet and she looks down.

Willow begins to scream.

* * *

Lois O'Neil knows for a fact that vampires can love, whatever foolishness some humans believe. She loves her job. She loves her bar. Oh, maybe she doesn't love all her clientele, the less so in recent months, but she's fond enough of them too, and fond enough of the money they bring in that she's not planning to keep anyone out. An ensouled vampire's cash is still cash, after all.

There are a good deal more of them, too. Ordinary vampires come to a place like this to relax; hunting is fun, but one doesn't _always_ want to exert oneself for a meal. But the ensouled are stupidly squeamish. Like vegetarians, she thinks, they can't stand the thought of eating anything that moves around. They differ in what they can put up with; some will take bagged human blood (often without asking where she got it), while others feel free to feed on "evil" humans, and still others-the lowest, in her mind-will drink only from animals. Last month she accepted her first shipment of dog blood, which is not so foul as pig, let alone rat, but far from otter, something of an occasional delicacy even for the unsouled. Otter is simply too hard to get ahold of, sadly, at least for a small operator like herself. She'd rather not purchase the disgusting stuff at all...well, otter, maybe, if she could find it cheap enough...but the customer is always right, and there's no profit these days in being a bigot.

Someone always makes money off chaos, though. The bar is lined with poor unhappy sots struggling to stay afloat under the massive weight of guilt they've brought on themselves, and the tables too, and the booths are filled with slightly higher-quality customers plotting out some way of making their own profit off the mess, along with a few demonic minions-Fyarl, mostly. It's almost enough to make Lois forgive that sire-killing Slayer bitch Buffy Summers. No one seems entirely certain who it was that turned the girl, but everyone agrees the fool is dead. Must have been off his rocker, Lois supposes. Nothing good ever came of turning Slayers. Except, in Lois' case, a tidy sum.

If this keeps up, she realizes, she'll soon be able to buy one of those new-fangled tap contraptions that draw off the blood and heat it. Rumor had it the blueprints had come out of Sunnydale too, a few years back, albeit a bit modified. Lois' lips twitch at the thought of restoring the original specs and filling taps off live humans. The poor devils here would never guess, and she'd really be doing them a favor. Live blood is so much healthier in the long run. Too much risk of giving them back a taste for the good stuff, though. They might go off hunting on their own again. She shakes her head and goes on filling glasses.

The doors swing open, admitting a foul odor of alcohol and other noxious chemicals. Lois sighs as the scent's owner follows it inside. Not so much for the nasty smell-which would be bad enough on its own-as for her sire. A hundred-fifty years of bloodshed and destruction, and in the end it all comes down to this. One damned girl in all the world. Hundreds of Slayers had been bad enough, though fortunately they seemed ill-trained, but everyone lived with the possibility of ending as dust and always had. The real risk is in not ending, in spending weeks or months or-who knew?-maybe even years in misery first.

Lois searches briefly for an empty spot before shooing a fresh-faced girl with too high a running tab from her stool. Respect for one's sire-up to a point, anyway-makes the world go round. Though sometimes the best respect one can offer a sire is to show you've outgrown him. "Eddie," she calls, "over here, hon." Edwin is still so much faster than her, so much stronger. Always will be, barring training rather too intense for her tastes. He shambles over to the cleared seat with a grateful look on his face, clutching his jacket tight around him as if he were cold. It might be kinder to put him out of his misery, but for now she still owes him too much. And he owes her a bit too much, too. Maybe if he ever manages to pay up.

Eddie fumbles about with the box of napkins to no obvious purpose. "G'd evenin', Lo'." From the scent, she'd say he's had a little too much wine. She never drinks wine, not seeing the point in becoming drunk and not particularly liking the taste. They said one had to acquire such things, and Lois had never really cared to. It doesn't really matter what she does any more-she'd said her prayers in life and her soul is perfectly safe with Jesus now-but she prefers to be fully aware of the mayhem she's causing. Odd, though...he doesn't sound drunk.

"Lemme get you a glass, Eddie. We've got plenty of dog on hand. Or horse, if you'd rather...it's a little fuller." What a waste he's become, the man who taught her everything she needed to know. Bloodshed. Chaos. Oh, and the joy of old monster movies. Eddie knew the greats backward and front. Boris Karloff...Bela Lugosi...Lon Cheney. Eddie had shown her that, for all the expense of modern special effects, the old masters of the genre were the ones who truly understood what they represented. She doubts now that he could so much as be roused to complain about the travesty of "Nightmare on Elm Street". He's simply too far gone.

To her surprise, Eddie smiles at her. "Ac'shally...I think, j'st this once, you sh'ld get me an AB." Diffidently, but with more confidence than he's shown in...well, far too long. "J'st this one time, that is. I, um..." He drops his head again, sighing. "Even if you killed 'em, I'm not hurtin' em anymore, right?"

She stares at him for a moment before fetching a glass. Maybe he's recovering. A fool thought-they never really recover, not the good parts at least-but just maybe. At least enough to stop moping about and do something with his unlife. "Here you go. Drink up, hon. This'll fix you up proper, not like that glop you've been on."

Eddie takes a hesitant sip, and his face lights up. How long has it been since he so much as showed a fang? "Yer right, Lo'. This's the good stuff." He swallows it down like the ambrosia it is. "Can't get 'way from it, can we?"

"Course we can't, Eddie." She pats him on the shoulder. Some sires would never allow such familiarity, but Eddie'd always taken great pleasure in observing his spawn. "It's in our nature, you know. You shouldn't fight it so hard." He'd told her he liked to change all different kinds of people-rich and poor, good and evil, old and young-to see what the transformation made of them. There were always similiarities and differences, naturally, and it seemed impossible to predict the degree. He himself had been a "freethinker" in England in life, though he'd never quite given up belief in God. For him it had been more a matter of fashion than real conviction, and he'd especially enjoyed seeing what became of people with strong faith of any kind. She'd been a Baptist herself...actually, supposes the other part of her still is, as far as such things matter in the afterlife. "Besides, hon...it's way too late for us to go changing now, isn't it?"

Eddie just nods and finishes his drink, not looking so enthused anymore. He'd never wanted to change before; none of them had. It was this whole unnatural mucking about with souls and black magic that made them want that. "S'pose it is. Way, way too late." Now that his glass is empty, he seems to be sinking back into melancholy, but when she moves to refill it he blocks her. "Had enough, Lo'." She doubts that, but lets him be.

"Will you be staying a spell, then? I've missed seeing you around here. Vanessa and Curt would be glad to talk to you too." They're his spawn, too, both a few years younger than her. They tend more toward the violent kills, but every now and then the four of them had gotten together here to shoot the breeze. There's still such a thing as friendship, after all.

"Don't 'spect to leave here t'night, Lo'." Eddie shakes his head, and for the first time lets his jacket fall open a little. Lois' eyes go wide. She could run for it, but maybe she'd have a better chance trying to rip the wires loose...not that she knows the first thing about what she's seeing. No telling how much he's got packed in there. "I really am sorry." He palms a sort of button-trigger out of his left sleeve. He's always been faster than her. His thumb tightens on the button. "But we belong dead."


	3. What Puzzles the Will

Disclaimer: None of the characters (except Sadha Kaur) belong to me. Don't stress...the big guy lets us play with them.

Characters: Ensemble (most everyone who's still around is here now-still no Xander, Angel, or Andrew). Including Anne and the new character Sadha Kaur.

Rating: PG-13 (contains some fairly disturbing images-gruesome injury, self-harm)

Setting: Post-"Shadow Sun"

One who excels in shutting uses no bolts, yet what he has shut cannot be opened.

One who excels in tying uses no cords, yet what he has tied cannot be undone.

Therefore the sage always excels in saving people, and so abandons no one,

Always excels in saving things, and so abandons nothing.

-Tao te Ching XXVII

One thing is for certain: Caritas is no Willy's Place. All the same, Giles prefers dining where the patrons' faces bear less resemblance to the pizza.

"As if you should talk," Ms. Kaur informs him. "Humans survive in spite of lacking a sense of smell. Vampires survive in spite of having one." All right...granted. Considering what he _can_ smell, he supposes she has a point. Although...

"I was under the impression that much of what smells foul to us is pleasant to you." Why else live in crypts and sewers? Surely not for the associations alone.

"Some of it," she allows. "The scents of blood and of decay. Not all. And some of the things you enjoy, we find unpleasant-and far more intense. You really have no idea how lucky you are, Mr. Giles. Or how unlucky." She looks around, exposing a curious set of fine scars across her neck. "You say you know the proprietor here? Very upscale, as demon bars go."

"Clem has come up in the world since leaving Sunnydale," he shrugs. "Though apparently his management skills leave something to be desired. I admit to helping him out from time to time; worse things could be in charge than he." A pity that Lorne seems to have vanished since his last job for Angel. Perhaps, Giles speculates, he went home to Pylea. No doubt it would be safer for him there.

Sadha nods idly. "So I've heard. Don't mention my name to any Carcharo demons, by the way." Lowering her voice conspiratorially, she adds, "Most of the bars I've been in insist we acknowledge debts our other selves incurred, and I'm afraid I'm short of kittens at the moment."

"As you like." Inwardly, he winces, though objectively speaking, what demons do with kittens is among the least of their vices. "Shall we cut to the chase, Ms. Kaur? I'm not at all certain why I should take you on."

"Why not?" The vampire affects a surprised tone-yet clearly she has anticipated his objections. "I'm given to understand your numbers are dangerously low...sir...and that the same is true of your average recruit's level of experience. Which I can certainly provide. How many of your Watchers, prior to yourself, actually mentored a Slayer for any length of time?" She holds out her hands, waggling outstretched fingers. "Shall I count out the number?"

Higher than you can account for that way, he considers answering-but only if one counts those whose girls lasted a matter of months or less, and he does not. True, not all of those were simple failures, but he has no way of being sure how many. "The fact remains, Ms. Kaur, that you are what you are." He plows on, overriding her attempt to speak. "I am as relieved as anyone to imagine the possibility of peace, at long last, yet I cannot allow myself to hope blindly. Remember your own training. When I arrived in Sunnydale, I had never heard of a vampire with a soul. Granted that I knew of certain relatively harmless species of demon, my loyalties were to humanity, and essentially uncomplicated. The mere existence of Angel changed that, and not for the better. Simply by being what he was, he forced me, and more importantly my Slayer, to hesitate. There were no others like him-as far as we knew, at least-and yet there was no way to be certain. Nor could we be certain of him, either, as we learned to our regret." Giles allows himself a brief shudder, recalling what he had suffered at Angelus' hands-both in his own person, and for the harm done to others. "The spread of ensoulment does not simplify our task, Ms. Kaur. It complicates it...immensely."

Her eyes sweep over him, considering, while the rest of her remains utterly still. "It's not that you don't trust me, then," she says at last. "Not personally. You believe that having a vampire as Watcher will muddle a Slayer's loyalties, force her to pause and question when she needs to act." He begins to nod-she understands-and she continues rapidly, her voice gone suddenly hard. "You want them to behave as Buffy does now. Slay first and ask questions later. Kill them all and let the Powers that Be sort them out. Is that it?"

She stops there, abruptly, to let him choke out an answer. "Of course not. But..." Her hand brings him to a halt.

"And you have no girls who are like that already? None who would benefit from being forced to hesitate, even if only for a moment?" A waiter places their glasses on the table and, for a wonder, she seems to ignore hers completely. "Give me your worst, your hardest cases. Let me give them something to question. One way or another, they will have to deal with souls, Rupert. Don't you think they should listen to their own?"

Giles grips his glass hard and takes a soothing swallow of wine. "Your point is taken. One way or another, they'll have to make these distinctions, and best they learn to do so as soon as possible." With a sigh, he adds, "It's a very fine line to walk, Ms. Kaur."

She lifts her own glass, studying it dubiously, and drinks. "Don't I know it."

Giles nods sympathetically. "As I alluded to before, we have been effectively at war for a very long time. In war...everyone ends by doing things they're not proud of. Assuming they're lucky enough not to become proud of them." And elaborating on that is a subject he prefers to leave for a later time, even with a fellow Watcher. "How is your drink?"

"Crisp." She sighs. "A little flat. Your basic blood-drive B-negative." Giles blinks, taking off his glasses. A little polishing would be useful. "You'll approve even less when I say I miss the taste of fear. Just a bit."

"Generally speaking," Giles opines, "I've found the drinking of human blood to be a bad idea, even when no one is directly harmed. Are you planning to make your Slayer aware of this habit?"

"I don't see any point keeping secrets, unless I think she'll stab me in my sleep. As for the risk of acquiring a taste, would you happen to know that when you were a teenager, human placental meat was something of a fad here in the States?" Sadha makes a broad gesture with her glass. "I'm not aware of any human restaurants that have begun serving Soylent Green, though."

The cleaning hasn't helped at all. Giles replaces his glasses. "It doesn't bother you, then?"

"Rupert-is it all right if I call you Rupert? Call me Sadha, please-I once slit the throat of a thirteen-year-old boy and watched him bleed to death to break his ritual summoning and prevent his dark masters from erupting onto the Earth. Yes, I was human at the time. As you said, in war we all do things we're not proud of. This-" She drains her drink. "-is not one of them. Does it matter so much? The war can end, Rupert. I want to help you end it. Once that's done, people like ourselves can...become obsolete."

He takes a deep breath. "That would be a relief for all of us, I think...Sadha. May I ask..?" He gestures vaguely at her neck. "Those look to be one of the less-pleasant things you've experienced."

Sadha grins at him, half-tamed wolf to sheep. "Initiation ritual. If you've never met a _penanggalan_ , I'll have to tell you about it one day. And no, not pleasant. Not pleasant at all."

* * *

Dawn sits cross-legged on the bed and watches the pencil twirl in front of her. Some things are hard to study...and some aren't. She gets the words, all the different languages of magic. Meditation? Not so easy. Maybe she's just no good at sitting still and being quiet. Might explain why she has less trouble so early in the morning.

Three peremptory raps on the door, and suddenly the pencil is embedded in the ceiling. Only one person knocks like that. And Dawn is the only one Illyria knocks for. She doesn't wait for Dawn to answer, though. The blue-skinned woman strides into the room, the image of arrogance. Maybe Dawn should call her Smurfette again.

Illyria glances upward, taking in the results of her surprise entrance. "You are beyond this." Dawn winces. It would be much easier if Illyria treated her the way she treats everyone else.

"No," she says. "No, I'm really not. Giles says I need to take it slow. He's not making the mistake with me he made with Willow."

"He fears you. Willow is a spark beside your conflagration. I stirred in my slumber to feel you crack the plenum." Illyria cocks her head, that all-purpose gesture of distance between them. "This shell is unbecoming of you."

"Dawn Summers is not a shell. Dawn Summers is me. I don't even know if the Key could think."

"Thought is too small a word to encompass us," Illyria mutters. "We are greater than flickers of energy in a mass of protoplasm. You are-if not a god-the power of a god. The closest thing in this realm I have to a peer."

"Well," says Dawn, "if this is peer pressure, I think I'm gonna just say no. Okay? Cracking the...the plenum once is enough for me. Now did you come in here for a reason?"

If she were anyone else, Illyria might react badly. Like snapping-your-spine badly. For The Key, she shrugs irritably. "Your father does not speak to you. Your mother is dead. Your sister is beyond help. Why do you continue to value this shell? Why do you go on?"

Beyond help? The image of pencils embedded in the demon's eyes flickers through Dawn's mind briefly. Best to take her seriously and get rid of her, though. "This is my life. That's what life is for, not that you would know that. You live it. You find people you care about and you help them. You make the world a better place. I guess I'm not surprised you don't understand that, though. Buffy used to shove things like you back into the hellmouth on a semi-annual basis. Want me to take a crack at it?"

Illyria looks...wistful? "It would be gratifying to see you try. But nothing of my world remains for me. You are aware of that. For a time, I believed that perhaps I could come to care for Wesley, or Charles. Now they, too, are no more. If I could break this shell, discard its memories, and be what I was, I would do so gladly. I cannot."

Dawn stands up on the bed to retrieve her pencil. "Dunno what you expect me to do about it. Thanks for telling me you're really still evil, though."

Frustrated hissing. "Evil and good are words. You evade my questions. How do you live in this world when all that you cared about has gone? Is that why you allowed Connor to take you to the movies?"

"I needed a break. Humans do that to keep from overheating. Tell me this isn't turning into you asking me about boys, because, y'know...ten-thousand-year-old demon? That's just weird."

"Then you care nothing about him." Illyria's voice deepens to a rasp. "I remember everything about your world, and understand none of it. Small wonder...you do not even understand yourselves." Moving languourously across the room-it doesn't look like pacing, but Dawn isn't so sure-she adds quietly, "I inform Alexander that he reminds me of the most important human in my recent existence, and he reacts with indignation. I-"

"Wait...you told Xander he reminds you of _Wesley_?" In spite of herself, Dawn begins to giggle, drawing a glare. "Sorry. Look, when we knew Wesley he was a totally incompetent, self-important geek. You're lucky Xander didn't hit you, or rig your ceiling to fall in, or something."

"He would not dare."

"Okay, you're probably right there. You...liked Wesley?" It's a ridiculous notion. She's talking to an _Old One_. An ex-tentacled monster who didn't just kill the girl whose body she's wearing, but erased her, turned her into nothing at all.

"He was important to the shell. I...inherited many of Fred's emotions. And he aided me in adjusting to this age."

Crazy. Still...it did fit a pattern. Demons. Xander. Dawn sighs and cradles her face in her hands. "Odds are you remind Xander of Anya, too. Rebounds...usually a bad idea, but if you insist on trying..." She could derail this whole train now. Still...maybe Illyria deserves a little rejection. There has to be _something_ that can crack that ego. "Try out 'queen' and 'goddess', okay? No need to freak him out even more."

Smurfette bristles. "Gender is no part-" A piercing scream cuts across whatever she was about to say...followed by what sounds like a very detailed, if indistinct, call for help.

"Groan. Willow's got trouble. We'll talk about this later, Illyria. Don't make any moves without asking me first." She's almost surprised when the demon runs out of the room at her side.

* * *

Snuggling against her girl, Kennedy breathes in the warm sea air. She could get used to this. Which would be dangerous...cruises are expensive. Once a year is more than enough.

Someone jostles their seat. This crowd is insane. How'd the ship get so overbooked anyway? Not that she's complaining-there are women milling around all over the deck, almost all fit and trim, most of them hot. Willow hasn't objected, so there's no reason they can't enjoy the view together.

A young woman with lickably chocolate skin and a teeny white bikini stops in front of her. "Are dere no boys on dis cruise?" she asks in an outrageous accent. "I still have not kissed a boy." She waves her hands rapidly at her scrap of swimsuit. "You'd tink they would come up here to look at us if dere were any here."

Kennedy stifles a laugh. "You're asking the wrong girls, cutie. Although I'm sure someone will be happy to let you know." The other woman stares blankly at her, and she draws Willow a little closer as a clue.

"Kendra." Faith comes up behind the woman. "C'mon, let's mingle a little. I doubt we'll find any timber on this ship, but I bet we can find somethin' t'do without it." Grinning wickedly, she winks at Kennedy and leads Kendra off, one hand on her shoulder. Beyond them, Buffy is making a speech.

Kennedy blinks. Why is Buffy in black and white? "How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?" the older Slayer rants, not that anyone seems to be paying attention. The huge cross pendant around her neck weighs her down-no, it looks more like a bird of some kind. Kennedy strains to hear her over the noise of conversation. "...strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other..."

"She's not paying attention," says the woman beside her. It's not Willow's voice. Kennedy turns to find she has her arm around a plump blond-haired girl. Vaguely familiar for some reason, but not hers. "Those lines are all wrong."

"Yahtzee!" squeals Harmony. "Woot woot woot!" The First Slayer snarls and overturns the table on her before stalking away through the crowd.

Kennedy stares at the girl next to her, frowning. "This is a dream, isn't it?" She waves a hand around at the crowd. "I'm not following any of this, though. And you don't look like a Slayer."

The blond shrugs. "I guess we'll never know. I doubt it, though." She closes her fists and makes...swimming motions?

"Here in this hand I hold his death!" Buffy shouts, waving the Scythe. "Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs...!" Kennedy winces and covers her ears. Some of the other girls have finally stopped to watch.

"Sorry," the blond tells her. "Buffy's not much of a listener, is she? You'd think she'd notice. We might still get through to her if she'd take a breather and look around."

 _Notice what? This is just a dream, right?_ Kennedy tries to answer, but her mouth refuses to move. She struggles to lift her arms, kick her legs, but they lie in place as if they belonged to a corpse. Around her the Slayers begin toppling to the deck.

The other girl responds anyway, softly. "Who said it was yours?"

"Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool!" shrieks Buffy. "And since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale!"

shrimp crawling out of the ocean over the boat nothing but shrimp

* * *

 _Okay, okay, I'm awake!_ But shouts keep ringing in Kennedy's ears as she struggles from beneath the covers. Will's gone...she's the one making the racket. Her and the pounding of Slayer feet, anyway. Kennedy doesn't bother with a robe; her underwear will have to do.

The stairs are crowded, and she's last in line. With a shrug, she leaps the bannister, landing in a crouch and rolling forward, back to her feet. If this were practice, it'd be fun.

"We have to get her inside!" Will calls out, dropping a bundle onto the counter and racing back to the door. The lump skids, leaving thin smears of red in its wake. A head? Looks a little late to her, but if it's a demon, who knows?

Kennedy arrives at the door to find Willow struggling with the body the head came from. Its arms and legs, surprisingly, are twitching weakly. "I've got it, Will. What's the rush?" She seizes the arms and begins to pull; whoever it is, even if she's somehow alive, is in no shape to complain.

"We have to get the rest of her," Willow urges. "We have to get her all in before the sun gets any of the pieces!" Kennedy blinks and stares down at what she's holding. Where the spine should be, a great red furrow has been dug into the flesh.

"Willow, this doesn't make any sense. Her head...if she's a vampire, the sun shouldn't matter. Why isn't she dust already?" But she drags the body inside anyway. No point arguing with reality-and the limbs are still twitching, too.

"I've got a theory." For once, the redhead doesn't stop to elaborate-she and the others have begun grabbing up bits and pieces. Vertebrae... Kennedy's stomach flips over as she realizes who's responsible. Swallowing hard, she goes to get a closer look at the head.

Anne's eyes look up at her. Anne's lips part, mouthing words she lacks the air to voice. "Oh god...no rush, Anne. You'll have time to talk. We'll...we'll put you back together. Somehow. Willow, we can put her back together, right?" Kennedy reaches around to feel the back of Anne's neck. The same great gouge is there, running all the way up to the base of her skull.

The clatter of pieces of bone dropping to the table. All the rest of the pieces. Everyone's gathered around. Even Illyria-Kennedy shudders; a thing like that standing next to Dawn!-wrinkles her nose in a gesture of mild disgust. Probably not brutal enough for her.

"I think..." Willow begins, hesitating. "If we stitch the pieces back together...I think they should heal up. Eventually. This is way, way beyond anything I've seen a vampire recover from, but-"

Rona butts in. "She's decapitated. We shouldn't have anything _to_ stitch together."

"Supercooling," Willow states uncertainly. They all stare at her, Dawn wearing a frown of partial comprehension. "Buf...I mean, whoever did this..." Kennedy wraps an arm around her. Of course it's Buffy. No one else does this. It must have been a mistake. It must have been. Buffy must not have felt her soul...somehow. "I think they carved out the whole spine from the body, then cut the head loose, with just the spine attached. And then chopped off the vertebrae one by one. I've never heard of that before, and I doubt they expected it, I sure wouldn't, but...if you cool water really, really slowly, and you have to do it all just right and be sure there aren't any impurities, and...well, it doesn't freeze. It's like the molecules get confused, they don't realize what they're supposed to do..."

Dawn raises an eyebrow at that. "You mean her body doesn't know her head's gone?"

"Something like that, yeah." Willow winces. "And if...we have to be careful, really really careful when we start working on her. I don't know for sure, but...um, if you get just a speck of something in supercooled water, or jostle the container too much...Ice."

"You mean dust."

"Yeah. And we really, _really_ don't want that."

Willow knows. She's seen it too. "She's got something to tell us," Kennedy puts in. "Serious bad news." Their stares rise from the head to her. "If this happened to you, would you keep fighting? The sun's rising. In another few minutes she'd have been out of her misery. Anne, stick out your tongue. Let them see." The head-Kennedy has trouble thinking of it as a person-obliges. Its tongue is covered with pavement grit and little compression furrows. Illyria makes a small noise in her throat. She sounds impressed.

"I heard a noise," Willow mumbles. "She was...was...bumping against the door. She had to live, to tell someone. That's how important it is. Whatever it is."

Dawn covers her mouth, clutches her stomach, and runs from the room.

Poor kid.

* * *

Vampire!

Buffy's on her feet faster than a cat. But nothing else moves in the darkness.

Oh. It's only her.

Buffy glances at the clock. She's slept three-quarters of an hour. That's actually not bad any more, nor is it always her Slayer senses that wake her. Her body seems hardly to need it. She wishes she could say the same for her mind. She feels...brittle. Disconnected. But lying down again will do no good. What was she dreaming?

...something about a whale. It doesn't matter. None of it is real. She doesn't really dream. She doesn't really sleep.

The crypt seems to shimmer in her eyes. Or not. It's only mimicry, after all. Buffy doesn't feel fear, or sadness, or even anger or hate. Buffy doesn't feel. Buffy doesn't think. There is no Buffy. The only senses she has that still matter tell her that. Her corpse moves on puppet strings. No one is inside. Just a demon, a thing...pretending. Even to itself. If only she could stop.

How do you go on like that?

There's only one way she knows of to reconnect herself. To make the illusion seem real again. She hurries across the room to the bookcase, opening the one door on the top shelf, retrieving it.

Sunlight would do, if she could risk having a crack in the walls. Buffy is no more resistant to sunlight than any other vampire her age, though her speed allows her to stretch seconds into usefulness if she must. A knife would do, really. Still, somehow this seems appropriate. A secondary reminder, a bit of reality inside her doublethink. She is what she is. Buffy puts on the glove inside-she needs at least one hand, to work-and picks up her cross.

Streamers of smoke rise even from the glove. If she holds on long enough, it'll burn through to her skin...eventually. No sense wasting time. She presses the cross to her stomach, branding red into her flesh. Fortunately the afterimage doesn't retain the same effect as the object. However that works. It sears into her, searching for muscle or bone or gut.

After a white-hot moment, she takes it away. Pain isn't real either. It feels that way, though. For a few moments, she can pretend. This time the pretense doesn't hold. Grimacing, she presses the cross to her cheek. The skin there is more sensitive.

Not sensitive enough, though. She could fall through the floor, still, or float away into the air...like a soap bubble. Or pop. Almost, for a moment, she wants to pop. To let go. But that would mean failure. Buffy doesn't fail. There are worse things she can do. She has a list, a hierarchy of places to burn. She's never reached the top-she hopes never to reach it-but this episode is a bad one. She can progress upward, if she wants...but Buffy thinks she knows the measure of it now.

She opens her mouth and puts the cross inside.

Saliva flashes to steam. Buffy bites down. The pain is her. The pain is real. Her tongue, her...teeth, burning. Still she clenches tight, tendrils of vapor rising from her nose. Just...a little...longer... The room spins.

Buffy finds herself on the floor. Squeezing her eyes closed against the searing, she spits out the offending bit of metal into her gloved palm. The cross is real. The floor is real. The crypt is real.

Buffy is real. Real enough, at least, to go on with.

She rises to her feet and staggers toward the refrigerator; she tears open a chilled packet of blood and pours it over her tongue. Immediate relief...verging on bliss, even. By the time she's ready to go out tonight, the burns will have healed. That much, at least, remains the same.

One day, perhaps, she can let go. Maybe by then she'll be ready for where she expects to end up. It's not as though she's never been there. And maybe then she can forget who she's pretending to be.

There ought to be a better way, dammit. Buffy sighs. Sometimes she wishes Clive Barker were a little more right about the demon world.

She could use a good puzzle box right now.


	4. Out of Sight

Disclaimer: Of the characters in this fiction, only Gabriel, Michelle, and Sadha belong to me. The rest are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

Characters: Ensemble

Rating: PG

The oracle concerning Dumah:

One keeps calling to me from Seir,

"Watchman, what of the night?

Watchman, what of the night?"

The watchman says,

"Morning comes but also night.

If you would inquire, inquire;

Come back again."

-Isaiah 21:11-12

Michelle sleeps.

Or so it would appear, with her still form and closed eyes. Gabriel knows that what the woman he loves is experiencing is more than sleep. Even in her coma, she sometimes stirred, shifted an arm or twitched an eyelid. She has not done so one time since he disconnected her from the machines. She never moved as he leapt from the window, fleeing the frantic sound of alarms. She never moved as he sprinted away from the hospital, or loaded her into the car, carefully parked several blocks away where it would not be associated with her disappearance.

This sleep is the sleep of death. But not true death, either.

Still, Gabriel wonders. Does he really know she will wake? The time taken for the change varies. Perhaps hers is already complete. Perhaps this, for a vampire, is coma. It might be that she will simply lie here, never aging, never decaying, an eternal Sleeping Beauty that not even a kiss can waken. She i _should_ /i heal, he believes...but how can he be certain?

Just as likely that she heals even now. Perhaps her deep injuries delay her waking while the new essence within her repairs them, and no longer. Would an MRI reveal the truth? But then, he would have to get her back into a hospital, a seeming corpse in his arms. It would be, at best, a difficult business, and perhaps for nothing.

No, for the moment, all Gabriel can do is wait. And watch.

* * *

Bloodshot eyes follow her movements. Aside from that, he never shifts a muscle. The dead don't need to.

His hair has grown again. She remembers grainy images of him, remnants from another life, an Angelus with a thick, glorious mane. That vampire never displayed the scruff of months without a shave, though, even in that era when the only means at hand was a straight razor and clumsiness meant cutting. This Angel has simply ceased to care.

Nothing can purge him of the territorial instinct, though. He knows what she is. Long experience lies to him that he alone is harmless, out of all his kind. So he watches.

"I doubt your parents named you 'eternal'." His tone is even, suggesting no more than idle chatter to pass the time.

"They might have," she tells him. "Sikh names always suggest qualities of virtue or spiritual excellence. But yes, that would be a rather large coincidence. My other self changed one syllable. 'Sadvi' means 'saint'. If I ever was that, though, I never will be again. Do you consider yourself an angel, then?"

He shakes his head. "'Angelus' was a sick joke on Darla's and my part. Afterwards, I didn't know what to call myself...just that I still wasn't really Liam any more."

Sadha nods. "No one ever really reclaims her innocence. One can only decide the future...never change the past."

"Are you...did you go back to your family's faith?" Angel studies his hands, lost in thought. "The world I lived in seemed to become too complicated for what I'd...at least mostly believed in as a human. But I don't know much about Sikhs."

"I believe some of it," she tells him, not ready to explain what parts. "As for the rest...being a Watcher was religion enough for me. A Chosen One. Spirit powers. Saving the world from demons. Yes...I want to return to that."

Angel frowns, thinking. "I guess it doesn't take a great deal of faith to believe in what's in front of your eyes."

"No. But it takes a great deal of faith to believe that you can change it." She hesitates. "Then again, once one has experienced such a change..."

"I thought...I really believed she'd done the impossible," he muses. "After all, she always has. Saved the world. Come back from the dead." Angel's eyes meet hers, for the first time so far. "I was starting to believe maybe she could do it. That she really could be good without a soul, even if that meant I was a failure after all. I wanted to believe she really intended everything that's happened. And now this."

"And so now you know the truth." She takes a seat at last, facing him at angles across the room. "Is it so bad to have been right the first time?"

Angel hesitates. Perhaps he's thinking. Finally..."Yes. It's that bad." He seems so earnest. He's centuries older than her, but at this moment, he appears quite young. "I wanted Buffy to live at least part of her life in the light. That's why I didn't stay with her, you know. She deserved better than me. And she deserved better than to become the thing she fought."

"Yes," Sadha replies after a moment. "Unlike some of us."

He stares curiously at her. "It's not really something you can deserve, Sadha. It only makes you worse."

"Perhaps. Still, I sometimes think there's a justice in becoming what you behave like." Quite likely he doesn't understand at all. "Maybe that's why the Powers offered you humanity."

Angel snorts. "I had to turn it down to do what they wanted. I'm not sure any more that it was ever meant for me, and if it was it isn't mine now. It could be you. Or Anne, or any number of others. Hell, it might be Harmony. I'm the only vampire with a soul it can't be."

"Had you ever considered," she offers, "that if they can choose to give it to you, they don't need a prophecy to do it?" Surprisingly, he flinches. "It's not yourself you want it for, is it? Not anymore."

His eyes lowered, he mumbles, "If I could give it to Buffy, I would. But she can't have it either. Not the way she is."

* * *

"She's not Buffy."

"I can't believe you'd say that, Xander. After all that she's done for us..."

"And I can't believe you don't believe it, Will. It's a vampire. A demon. It's not the same as her. It's...Buffius."

He won't see it. He won't let himself. "There's something left of her, Xander. There has to be. She saved my life."

"She did it to torture that vampire. You just happened to be there at the time."

"Then why not torture me instead? Don't say it's because I'm not a challenge. I could kill her if I tried hard enough, you know."

"You should. Every time you don't, you're betraying her. You keep telling me I'm being disloyal to Buffy, but I'm not. Loyalty to Buffy, the real Buffy, means killing the thing wearing her face."

"Xander, please. She doesn't have to die. We can fix her."

His face contorts. She can't read him the way she used to. Maybe it's the eye. "You always want to fix everything, Will, but there are things that can't be fixed. She's already dead, and you can't _fix_ that! Not this time! What do you think Tara would say?"

Whenever they argue about Buffy, he throws that at her. "I don't know, Xander. All I know is what she did. She believed it was wrong, and she helped us anyway, because it was important." Willow always ignores the other aspect, the implication that Tara would recoil in disgust at the "unnatural _thing_ ". She might have...though Willow can't recall that she ever did...but it doesn't matter. "It's important again now."

"I'll be at the meeting when Anne can talk," Xander grumbles. "I won't promise anything else. Right now, I have a lunch date."

She never needles him any more. She knows he's already hurting. But... "Xander? First date again, right?" He nods. "Don't you think you should start asking yourself why?"

"She's human, Willow. I don't need any monster in my woman. I'll find the right one when I find her, but I'm tired of dating girls who try to have me for lunch."

Willow just shakes her head. "Then at least don't push this one away."

"I never do. Goodbye, Willow. Don't call unless the world's ending."

The door closes behind him. "I won't," she murmurs. "I won't."

* * *

Giles watches as she drinks.

Anne lies prone on the cot, a bloody dressing draped over her back. The blood is not her own. Her arms are stretched out to either side. Already she can make them twitch. Even if a human could heal from wounds like hers, it would be a hideously slow process. Willow believes Anne will be moving around in a week, walking in perhaps a month, with proper care. Sooner, if she could have been worked on properly, the way Spike's hands were re-attached.

Naturally-so to speak-her esophagus has healed first. Her trachea is another matter. For now, she can manage a bubbly hiss of a word every few minutes, and no more. Giles has managed to nap for a few hours, waiting for her recovery, but only out of exhaustion. He suspects he will not be able to sleep again until he hears what has happened.

Faith is seated at her side, urging her to sip from a mug. Strange, that...a Slayer feeding a vampire blood. Once he would have been outraged. Now it seems almost normal. Anne's head extends a little past the cot's end, with a makeshift frame to support it. She could harmlessly bury her face in a pillow, of course, but she needs nourishment.

"Faith," he suggests, "perhaps she's had enough. She can't process it instantly, any more than you could digest a steak all at once."

She ignores his feeble pun, but removes the mug from Anne's mouth. Anne lets it go without any attempt at protest. "And you can't keep going without some shuteye, G. I warned you what's gonna happen if you go passing out on us in a meeting."

"I've gotten the rest I needed, Faith. Please don't pester an old man." He's not so old, not yet, but Faith will never see it that way. Giles is tired, but not so tired that he can neglect his duty.

"Have it your way. Call me if ya need help." She hands him the mug. "Or if ya need more sleep."

Giles nods and watches her go...then turns his gaze back to Anne. "Is there anything...? I'm sorry...I suppose you couldn't tell me if you needed anything. Believe me, we never expected this from her." He frowns at the mug. "Perhaps we should have. I don't know."

Anne frowns slightly at him and manages to shake her head slightly, though as if she expects it to fall off.

"If only you could tell us...clearly she spoke to you, explained something. I suppose we'll have to wait until you can talk again."

Her brow crinkles into the demon's form. Giles winces. There's no one that this looks right on, but it's worse for some people than others. The kind, and the delicate-featured...Anne is both. Dawn...Tara...Jenny. Fortunate that he's never had to see that look on any of their faces. And he's becoming distracted. "I apologize...are you thirsty again?" He offers her the mug.

Instead of taking it, she changes back. He studies the look, setting the mug aside. Anne changes again, back to her demon face. And again.

Demon. Human.

Dark. Light.

Evil. Good.

It means something, the changing. She's trying to communicate with him. If only he weren't so tired...he sees the duality, but her purpose eludes him. He's drifting...right and wrong...Buffy in the graveyard. Ford is dead. _Nothing's ever simple anymore. I'm constantly trying to work it out. Who to love or hate...Does it ever get easy?_

 _She irons her jeans. She's evil. She has to be destroyed._ Buffy, her soul half drained away, right about Kathy's nature, but only by chance. Making judgments on the slimmest of evidence. Harsh, even vicious...hating a girl who, despite the harm she'd done, had only wanted a better life.

Soulless.

Dear God.

* * *

Normally Faith wouldn't pay the least attention to Willow babbling about prophecies, but...

"...See, it turned out there was a prophecy about how Kakistos was supposed to die, and it happened more or less the way the prophecy said, but it wasn't scheduled till 2050 or so, and there was only supposed to be one Slayer involved. Since Buffy died the first time, the prophecies started getting scrambled, and the Scythe spell made it worse. Things that are supposed to last decades all happen at once, and other prophecies are getting skipped. Anyway, we think the Slayer prophecies must have all been written with one Slayer in mind, and somehow that not being true any more is sort of garbling them."

"That could...complicate matters, if we can't gain accurate information from the prophecy compilations." Faith doesn't trust this new vampire. Not yet. A soul doesn't mean i _that_ /i much. Besides, the Indian broad is old-school Watcher material. Not that she quite expects a retrieval team to kick the door down, not following a vampire, but still.

"You know, truthfully, I think I like it better this way." Willow scowls thoughtfully. "I mean, not knowing isn't exactly a picnic, but the last prophecy we could rely on for sure got Buffy killed. Destiny? Kinda overrated, if you ask me." Faith smirks. She doesn't agree with Red often, but this she can go for. In spades.

The office door swings open, drawing stares from all 'round the room. Anne can't be up and moving yet, no way. Giles staggers out instead, looking like death left under a heat lamp a few minutes. Damn. Bad news coming.

It's Dawn who manages to speak up first, never mind the nervous stammers. "G-Giles? She's not-? She didn't die...did she?"

Giles seems to pull himself together all of a sudden, even if his face is still greyish. His voice is calm...dismissive. "Does it matter? She is a monster."

Half the room speaks at once...but they're all saying the same thing, Faith included. "What?!"

Kennedy follows up, adding, "Giles, Anne's on our side. She helps out. A lot. What's the deal?"

Faith knows by now that Giles cleans his glasses when there's something he doesn't want to face. Everything else about him, though... "She looks like...just another animal to me." Serious casual.

"Giles!" Willow's voice, squeaky with shock and anger.

Before the room can burst into shouts, Giles suddenly deflates again. "Wait. Please...hear me out." Eying the suspicious stares, he goes on. "When Buffy was...was first turned, she told Angel her intentions: to defy her new nature and remain good. And ever since then, we have been waiting for her to fail. Because, of course, she lacks a soul. She i _must_ /i fail. Wouldn't you say?" He glances at Angel, waits for the inevitable nod. "Yet it has been nearly two years, and Buffy has fed only on the willing, or on vampires. She has killed only demons, so far as we know. There have been indications that she, she enjoys it rather too much...but that has been all."

Giles turns, facing them all one by one. "Because we have been waiting for the wrong thing. We've been waiting for Buffy to begin acting like Faith." His gaze focuses in on her. "Faith, I fear we have done you an injustice. We have allowed you to become our image, our archetype, of the bad Slayer. The rogue."

"Hang on, G. I've done some pretty awful things." What's he getting at? "You were right. Everything you blamed me for, I deserved it."

"I cannot deny that, Faith. And yet," he sighs, "it was not you who tortured Angel nearly to death on your first encounter with him. Or who leapt to the conclusion that Buffy was evil merely because she was with him.

"It was Kendra."

The room goes nuts. "What?!" Faith shouts over the racket. "How come nobody ever told me about this?"

"Tortured him?" Dawn squeals, barely audible. She must never've heard about it either.

Giles waits, obviously struggling not to sink into a chair. Finally, a lull. "Faith...none of us wished to speak ill of the dead. Kendra had...improved, over the brief time we knew her. And yes, Dawn. It was casual, to be sure, almost careless. Not in every respect like Buffy's behavior, I admit." He glances at Sadha, Harmony, the others who haven't heard. "She locked him in a small room with an east window, as the sun was rising. It would have filled with indirect sunlight, not immediately harmful, but growing steadily brighter over the course of hours." Faith stares in Angel's direction, startled. He doesn't look like he wants to remember any of this. "Until finally the sun would have fallen on him directly, had he not been taken away. The effect over that long a period... Imagine a human held at...perhaps a hundred degrees, Fahrenheit. Without water, or shade of any kind. The result would be similar."

"Damn." Miss Perfect Slayer...the Watcher's pet... "She _cooked_ him." By now Faith ought to know better than to be shocked by anything. It doesn't help. And everyone's looking at her now. "But she didn't know he had a soul, right?"

Giles shrugs slightly. "No. But nor did it concern her. He was a demon, a vampire. To her, that was all that mattered."

Willow jumps in. "Buffy told me later that she...Buffy, I mean...was freaking out because Drusilla was going to kill Angel. And Kendra was all, 'He's a vampire. Who cares?' If the plan hadn't been to cure Drusilla, I don't think Kendra would have done a thing...just waited for him to die so there'd be one less to fight."

"And that," the Watcher states, "that is what we are facing. Is it any wonder that we have repeatedly failed to predict Buffy's behavior? In a manner of speaking, she has done exactly what she intended. Buffy remembers her previous moral code, and for her own reasons is determined to follow it. But she does not i _feel_ /i it, and she has no one to guide her. And therefore there is no nuance...no forgiveness...and no mercy."

Harmony blurts out, "I don't get it. Is she good, or is she evil?"

"Yes." It's the first word Sadha's said since Giles came back. She sounds way too amused to suit Faith.

"What do we do?" Dawn's voice is trembling. "You said Kendra got better. Can Buffy? Can we help her at all?"

Angel, resigned. "Kendra was human. It was just her training. Once we got between her and her Watcher, once she started making friends... It's not the same with Buffy. Not the same thing at all."

Giles finally lets himself slide into a chair. "We'll know more when Anne can communicate more easily. Until then...there is little we can do. Almost certainly we must still ensoul Buffy. It's her best hope, in any case." He looks like he's drifting off again. No wonder, with the little he sleeps.

Willow sounds embarrassed. "How'd we miss it? I mean, Kendra...she..."

"She did what the Council told her," Giles interrupts sleepily. "And by the time we re-evaluated the Council, she was long dead. We had no reason to alter our opinion of her by then. Certainly I hate to besmirch her memory, Willow. Her intentions were good. She did the best she knew. Like all of us."

The redheaded witch puts a hand on his arm. "We helped her all we could in the time we had. And now we're going to help Buffy too. You'll see. I'll find a way."

Faith watches Giles fade. "Y'know, G...I keep warning you. Anne coulda told that to any of us. Guess I'm gonna hafta follow through on that threat." Before he can begin to protest, she scoops him off the couch. "Off to bed, G. Won't be doin' this again, will I? Cause, Slayer strength or no Slayer strength, you're still kinda heavy."

It's a lie, of course-he's awkward to carry this way, but not heavy at all. She takes her time, looks around the room. "Chew on this, guys. You brought _me_ back. And we've got four vampires with souls here in this hotel where there used to be one, and who the hell knows how many out there in the world. Anyone here so much as thinks of givin' up on Buffy without havin' her fangs in your neck, an' I'll do a lot worse than embarrass you in front of the gang. You see how I keep my promises."

And she lugs the head of the Watchers' Council off to bed.

* * *

Will she be able to love him back?

Of course, it's too late to worry about that now. It won't leave his mind, though. He stopped loving her. Maybe she'll stop loving him.

But he's been over this. It doesn't matter. There was no way he could leave her there to rot any longer, not now that he does love her again. He's going to have to let her go free and hope she stays with him, or comes back. He'll do the best he can to keep her from hurting anyone-she wouldn't have wanted that.

Though she may want it now.

He's still waiting. He remembers waking. He remembers gasping for a breath he didn't need. Don't they usually do that? But Michelle's chest remains still, lungs empty.

What does it mean? Should he worry yet? Is she not coming back? He'd been afraid to drink from her, afraid she would die too quickly. Her blood had already been drained; she was on the brink of death, or of life, where the machines had kept her, all those five years. Of course, she hadn't i _still_ /i been drained-they'd have begun rehydrating her the moment they got her in the ambulance. What if that matters after all?

What if all he's done is killed her?

He remembers the certainty he'd had, waking. Now nothing is certain any more. Nothing is clear. Maybe it was better the other way, with the world knife-blade sharp and himself ready to cut. Not that there's any going back, now. And he'd been without her. That was badness enough, though he hadn't realized it at the time.

So he watches. Not a sound from her. Not a twitch.

And then golden eyes...watching him back.


	5. Out of Mind

Rating: PG

Setting: Roughly 2 years post-"Chosen"; part of the DeadWar series

Characters: Ensemble

Disclaimer: This fiction is based on Buffy: the Vampire Slayer and Angel, which are the property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. Original characters are mine; all others belong to Joss.

Beta Status: Currently searching; my regular beta is swamped due to finals.

This was the end of Meg. There was to be no more anything. Ever. Exit Meg. Ex-Meg. X-Meg.

Then she realized that if she could think this, if she could think at all, then it was not happening.

-A Wind in the Door, Madeleine L'Engle

Black.

She rises through the black. The black is nothing, yet somehow also something. Before this, there had been no black either.

Images flicker through and around her. Flight. Pain. Fear. She recognizes them as past, though she does not remember living them until they have gone by. Dreams? Memories? Memories of dreams?

Knowing that they are past, though, she feels a kind of peace. Quiet. Stillness. As though the clamor of her body's gurgles and creaks has passed away. She's dead, then. This must be heaven. Funny, that. She hadn't been expecting an afterlife. Michelle opens her eyes.

Seeing Gabriel staring down at her is no surprise. Of course if she's in heaven, he must be there too. They had...they had been attacked. She recalls that much. By something terrible enough that it refuses recall.

"Michelle." She smiles. The muscles of her face should feel stiff-she hasn't used them in a while, and how does she know that?-but they don't. "Michelle, do you remember me?" Of course she remembers him! She rises lightly from whatever cushion it is she's on and wraps her arms around him.

"Why wouldn't I remember you?" She brushes her lips gently against his. There's an odd dryness to the sensation-her own lips are dry, she realizes after a moment, and licks them, unconcerned with the appearance of the gesture. "I love you." Appearances don't matter, not in heaven. There's not much illumination here. Still, it seems bright to her after the blackness. There are tears in his eyes. Why? She brushes them away, and only then notices her arm.

Her skin is translucent-pale, spiderwebbed with tiny veins. There is flesh there, of a sort, but all of it seems flabby and limp. She tests with her hands and is shocked to feel only thin, corded rags of muscle present. Her legs, the same. What is this? Shock leads her to breathe deep, and only then does she realize that she hasn't been breathing till now. "I..." she gasps. "What...?" Perhaps the dead don't need to breathe, but she should be kitten-weak with muscles like these. She doesn't feel weak at all. What's happened to her? Where is she? This is no heaven. Her hands run over her body, up her neck, and Gabriel plucks them away before they can reach her face.

"Shh," he tells her. "Try to be calm. Let me explain. Here, take this." He offers her a mug of something warm. Hot chocolate...it must be hot chocolate. He knows that's always soothed her nerves when she was anxious. "Do you remember what happened to us?"

She takes a sip. The flavor is wrong...yet strangely right as well. Michelle throws back her head and gulps it down. "We were...we were mugged. No...that's not right. We were attacked, but it wasn't muggers." What had they done instead? "Took us somewhere, and they...bit us. They...vampires?" Crazy thought, but then, she'd thought she was in heaven, too.

Gabriel surprises her with a nod. "But you lived through it. The place they were staying had neighbors, and they thought someone there was dealing drugs. The police found you there, barely alive." You? Not we? "This is going to be hard. You've been in a coma for...for five years."

"And now I'm what?" Coma. That must have been what she had thought was death. Of course. There was no afterlife, no gods or devils. She'd been willing to accept the evidence of her senses, of course, but obviously she was alive. It'd just been surprise talking when she thought otherwise. "Why am I not in the hospital?" This looked like an apartment in an abandoned building, now that she was paying attention to her surroundings, like the ratty couch beneath her. She couldn't have survived five years in a coma _here_. "Wait. Why am I not breathing?" Something still wasn't adding up.

Gabriel winces. "You're not breathing because you're dead." She frowns, and he takes her hand, guiding it gingerly toward her forehead. "Feel this." Some kind of brow ridges. They hadn't been there before, she was sure of that. "We were attacked by vampires, Michelle. And now we're vampires too."

"After five years?" Gabriel was teasing her. He believed in something higher, or claimed to-he wasn't sure what-and he'd liked to tease her from time to time, talking about unicorns or leprechauns. "It takes five years in a coma to become a vampire?"

His eyes fill with pain. "No. It's a long story, hon. But you need to believe me, okay? It's not a joke this time." He clasps her hands tightly, surprisingly strong. "Look at me." His face... _shifts_ , sprouting ridges and fangs. "Look. Don't be afraid."

She should be. She isn't. That's what convinces her at last...the absence of fear.

* * *

The demons sink to their knees before Illyria, and she smiles.

"We offer you but the faintest shadow of the honor you deserve, Great One." True enough-they should be prostrate-but this will do for now. "Old One, take our unworthy hearts if you so choose, but our service is yours as well."

"Why?" These are the first to approach her. Her memory has been dust longer than her armies, save among a few uselessly weak hangers-on. "Why do you come to me now?"

The leader seems puzzled. "The Slayer-who-was-Turned. She must be destroyed. She brings fear and devastation, turning the weak away from purity and sparing the impure from death. But you, Old One, are pure and unafraid. We know that you oppose her." He raises his arms to her, and she scowls and backs a step away. Facing the floor, he does not see. "You are the essence of everything the Scourge has fought for, oh great Illyria. Our lives are yours."

She seizes him by the throat, lifting him until she can see his eyes. "Do not insult me with flattery, wretch. Pure? I reek of humanity. This world, this vessel, have tainted me beyond repair." He tries to stammer something and she tightens her grip. "As for you...you were the slime beneath my feet. Your 'purity' is less than nothing. You wear their forms. You mime their history. And you dare call yourselves pure, when even I am not?" With a flick of her wrist, she hurls him against the wall. "At my slightest glance the seas trembled and the mountains bowed. I have no need of such as you. Serve me for what I am now, or not at all."

The rest of them sink lower, falling to hands and knees. It should be better. But now she sees the action for the mockery it is. They understand nothing. They offer her nothing. They are nothing. "We meant no offense, Great One," responds the next-in-command. "We grovel before you, Master of Time." Fool.

"Master of Time? My _time_ is done," she informs him. "As is yours. We have been conquered. All that remains for us is to choose whether it shames us less to die, or to walk in a world the humans have made their own."

He raises his eyes to stare at her, bewildered. "You? The god-king Illyria abandons her own kind? For humanity?"

"Can it be?" she mocks him. Her own kind indeed. "Can it be you have not heard that Illyria is dead?"

With a snarl he lunges at her, calling on his troops to attack. She spins, kicking him in the face, and he hurtles backward into his followers. The curs in their mock-human uniforms begin to howl for her blood. Illyria smiles. Violence is what she needs.

* * *

She needs the violence. In battle, Buffy can feel alive. Can _pretend_. That she makes a difference. That she matters. That she is.

"Grr. Hulk smash." The green-skinned demon brings its fists down where her head was a split-second ago, battering uselessly against the crypt's wall. Buffy is already behind him. "Hulk too slow. Hulk too stupid." Her hands slam into his back and drive forward, crushing him into the wall. The creature buckles, stunned for the moment, and she spins to face the others.

The other two rush her, swinging the swords they have not lost. "The darkness will swallow you, devastator. How dare you betray it? Your kind is bound to it with ties that cannot be broken." She leaps up and falls backward all at once, spinning; one blade passes above her, the other beneath.

Buffy smirks. "It already has. Must've choked on me." Their weapons are only half-withdrawn when she chops her hands into their wrists. The demons grimace in pain, but keep their grips on the swords. Tough bastards. She brings her foot up and back into the groin of the one she can feel behind her. "C'mon, I'm dead here, and you still can't put me down. Think maybe it's time to quit?" Buffy leaps, coming down behind them, and smashes their foreheads together, hearing bone and crystal shatter. That should finish those two.

"We do not surrender," the third tells her. "We are endless. Kill the three of us and you will face thirty. Kill thirty, and face three hundred." Blood trickles down its broken face.

"Funny," she deadpans. "Where have I heard that before? Try sending enough troops the first time, you cheap samurai knockoff, and can the tough-guy talk." The demon lifts its head, scowling, and spits green blood at her, just missing the cut on her left arm as she twitches it aside. "Poison blood?" Buffy smirks. "Hello, vampire here? I could walk through a vat of toxic waste and come out fine. Try another one."

She uses her right arm to lift it, though. Can't be too careful, and it looks like the bones in its face are setting themselves already. "You know nothing, undead," it spouts. Lame-ass demon bravado. "Kill all of us you desire. We cannot be stopped."

"If I know nothing," Buffy tells him sweetly, "then killing you would be a such a waste, wouldn't it?" She takes a loose plastic bag and stuffs it in the demon's mouth. "No nasty habits while you're my guest. I'm gonna learn aaall about you once I get back from this little appointment I've got. And if you're nice, and cooperative, and scream on key while I'm breaking your bones..." She snaps one of its fingers casually. "...I just might smash that gaudy piece of junk on your forehead when I'm done and let you die."

It doesn't answer. Stoic is good. In the end, the stoic ones always break.

* * *

"We're not breaking up, Xander. We were never actually together." Deanna replaces a strand of hair that's gotten loose. "I'm just saying, we've been talking barely two hours and your mind is just not on this conversation." Her spoon clatters into the bowl. "So either your favorite aunt is in the hospital, in which case, why are you here, or you're just not that into me. Which is it?"

"Look, Deanna," he struggles, "I just...there are a lot of things going on in my life right now. And I don't know that I can talk about them with you yet, okay? So I'm having to think a little harder about what to say, that's all."

"What are you, Spider-Man?" If she only knew... "I don't expect you to tell me all the intimate details yet. It's a first date. I asked you how you lost your eye, and you clammed up. I asked you about your home town, and you clammed up. I even asked you what you do for a living, and you..."

"Clammed up, I know." He thought he had his story all planned out, but the details keep slipping away when he needs them. Besides, if things were ever to work out, and then the girl finds out he's been lying, what then? "I guess...my life has kinda sucked, see? I don't like talking about my past, what with the abusive parents and the problem girlfriends and the natural disaster. I'm from Sunnydale. You know, the big sinkhole event?"

For a moment it looks as if she might show a little sympathy. Then her face hardens. "Truthfully, I'm thinking the sinkhole event is this date. I'm sorry, Xander. You're a nice guy, you're handsome, and actually the eyepatch sort of suits you. But either we really don't have anything in common, or you don't want to tell me about it, and I don't see how I'll ever get to know you that way." She slips a couple of bills under her plate. "Just take me home, okay?"

They drive to her home in silence. Then he drives through the city alone, in silence. All he wants is a normal relationship with a normal girl, in as normal a life as possible. In the last two years, he's been through ten normal girls. This isn't even the first one to dump him on their first date. His life just isn't normal, anyway, so what's he supposed to talk to them about? High school before Buffy showed up? Yeah...that's a real winning subject.

Xander pulls over, thinking, beneath the shade of tall oak trees. He's come to a cemetery. They have them everywhere...not just in Sunnydale. But Sunnydale is different. His life had been different before he ever met Buffy; he just didn't pay attention to it. A Hellmouth was like an all-you-can-eat buffet table, and he'd been on the menu. They all had been. He was just lucky the tongs hadn't closed around him and dumped him onto someone's plate. Maybe he just isn't meant for...

When did it get so dark?

Xander checks his watch. He's been sitting here spinning his mental gears for an absurdly long time. Must have totally zoned out, he supposes. He promised to be back at the Hyperion. Vampire or not, Anne has information, and it doesn't pay to ignore that. Just has to be taken with a grain of salt. It's a shame she's not herself any more. If she were human, they might actually have something in common. But a normal girl is what he needs.

Sometimes he dreams of Buffy, the real Buffy, when she was an actual girl-well, more human than not, he reminds himself; she was a Slayer, after all. They talk about what's going on in his life. He tells her his problems and his plans, supernatural and otherwise. She encourages him, too; she knows about the vampire, knows it isn't really her. One day, she tells him, he'll find a way to kill it. They're just dreams, of course. But he can believe in them while they're happening.

Checking his mirrors, he pulls out of the parking space. It must be windier than it feels; the tree branches reflected there are shaking slightly. Maybe he should just put Sunnydale behind him, forget all this stupid vampire-hunting crap. Xander drives away from the cemetery and never looks back.

* * *

"You sure you can carry this off, girlie?" She doesn't look like much. Humans always look that way, though...even the big ones seem small.

"I guarantee it. If you've brought what I asked for, they'll be crying for their mommies and your gang will be on top of the world." Cocky. Hampton supposes he likes that in a witch. The more powerful they are, the more they usually brag about it. They're just humans, after all-no horns or fangs or even lumpies to make them look ugly and tough-and if they waste too much power just showing off, they've lost their shot at beating you up.

"'Course I brought it. You just better not be askin' for anything you don't need, 'cause I paid through the nose fer some of it."

"You want quality curses, you pay the price." Her voice oozes confidence, but her hands are shaking and fidgety. Until she touches the packet of herbs and crystals...that seems to relax her. Typical. "You want cut rates, go to some cheap-ass wannabe. Amy Madison's not your girl."

Hampton just smiles, showing fang. "I trust you not to cheat me. Otherwise, I'd have you for a snack and find someone else."

The witch has guts. She smiles back at him. "Ritual space is all set up in back, except for the stuff you brought. C'mon in." She opens the curtain and starts back herself, then turns. "Oh, and don't get all planny. I know how to lock the door behind you when you leave."

"You got me, girl." The back of the shop is her personal space, it seems-her home. It's a fine line to draw, but it seems to have worked for her so far. "S'long as you follow through, I got no need for your blood. I'll be havin' plenty."

She places the last of the candles where they belong and hands him a bundle of the herbs and a sheet of paper. "Believe it or not, your kind's good at this sort of magic. Boundary between life and death stuff. Just read what it says when I stop, 'kay?"

He shrugs at the witch and follows her lead. "Quod perditum est in...invenietur." Amy frowns at him, but he's doing his best. Foreign languages never look like they're spelled right.

She raises her hands over the Orb. "Nisi mort. Nisi al finitei." Diego'll never know what hit him.

* * *

Illyria's waiting for him when he walks in the door. "You're late," she says. "And your shoes are muddy."

Xander glances down at them. He doesn't remember walking through any mud, but he must have. "How can I be late?" he asks her. "I said I'd be back when Anne could talk."

"You have no faith in the abilities of your own kind. In any case, they are not waiting for you. I heard your approach and came out to meet you."

Xander shakes his head, annoyed. "Why?"

Clearly she hears the irritation in his tones. She hears and understands more emotion than she lets on. "I had hoped... You have a movie. _Apocalypse Now_. But it is not about the apocalypse. I would like you to explain it to me. I must understand your culture if I am to be part of it."

"You're not part of it. You'll never be part of it." Just another demon, that's all she is. A monster out of some hell, come to eat the world. He ought to tell her that. She'd break his head open for saying it, but it would be the truth. "And I don't want you watching my movies without permission, which you won't get."

He tries to brush past her into the meeting room, but she seizes his arm. Nine years of hard training almost makes him resist, but again, she could rip that arm right off, and what good would that do? "You hate me for not being part of your world. Why will you not let me try to be part of it?"

"Because all you can do is imitate, Illyria. You're not human. You don't have feelings, or morals, or any of the things that matter. It's way past time you were dead, or at least out of our way. So get out of mine."

She sighs. It almost sounds real. "Perhaps you are right." After a moment, she adds, "What is longing? What is a star?" Xander frowns at her, but they aren't real questions; they sound as though she's trying them on for effect. None of her expressions ever look quite human, but he wonders how a simple blink can seem so alien, even on a face like hers. "Never mind. I have been thinking too much. They are waiting."

The meeting room-it must have been a ballroom, or a dining room, once upon a time-is crammed full of Slayers and vampires and Watcher-trainees and, of course, what's left of the Scoobies, all seated around a huge table. Before he can reach the chair next to Willow, Illyria is already in it, leaving him squeezed between her and Harmony. Harm flinches; Willow glares at him. Frustrated, he huddles in as best he can. He wants nothing to do with either of them, but it really is his own fault he's late, and he's just going to have to deal with the consequences.

Giles clears his throat. "If we can return to the business at hand? Anne was speaking."

In spite of himself, Xander feels just a little guilty. She's in a wheelchair, with some kind of box strapped over her mouth. The vampire looks sheepishly at Giles and gives Xander an apologetic wave with a trembling hand. "I'm not a psychiatrist," she says, or rather moves her lips and the box says for her in a robotic voice. Xander spots Andrew sitting near her; the blond Watcher nods to him. Of course it would be one of his toys. "But I've seen a lot on the streets and in the shelter. We can argue about the source of Buffy's problems all day, whether it's being a vampire and a Slayer at the same time, or trying to live in a way that's not natural for a vampire, or just the fact that she's totally alone. Whatever it is...I think any of us would be dead, in her place. But she's not well."

Spike was in a wheelchair too, Xander reminds himself. It didn't make him safer to be around. "Buffy talked," Anne says. "She talked the whole time she was cutting me up. She even let me talk back to her for a little while, until I said too many things she didn't want to hear. I don't think she's had a real conversation with anyone since she was turned. Even a vampire needs more of a social life than that. She doesn't sleep, either. Her body doesn't seem to need it, but I think her mind does. I'm not sure she can, not for long."

Anne raises her left arm and points to a spot on its underside, near her shoulder. "It gets worse. She burns herself. She had a scar here, where I think she must have kept it up too long. Some people use cigarettes; Buffy uses crosses. I don't think it makes a difference, except that she can. There are different reasons, but I'm almost certain it's about feeling like she's not herself any more. There's a term, depersonalization...the point is, she feels disconnected from the world, from herself, from everything. And she is, in more ways than one.

"But when I tried to give her some kind of hope for the future, she cut me off. She didn't want to hear it. I know it can't be guilt, but I'm not sure what it is. I want to believe it was because, on some level, she was afraid I was right. She's done so much..." She hangs her head tiredly. "And she didn't even mean to. And it's all about to go down the tubes. If we don't stop her, word will get out that Buffy doesn't care if you have a soul. If we do, she stops being the kind of threat she had to be to make a difference. Either way...the unsouled will turn on us, and on her. They've only put up with us as long as they have because they know they can't afford not to. It might have been them tomorrow. Now it won't be. They don't have any options left except to fight, no matter how hopeless it looks. And everyone else is going to be caught in the middle. So if anyone sees a way out of this mess...speak up."

No one does. It's quiet enough to hear crickets chirp, if there were any. Beside Xander, Harmony shivers; Illyria looks stoic as always.

"I think our first step has to be Buffy," Giles finally suggests. "After that...we can find a way to deal with the rest, once we have her on our side again."

"I can't get close to her," Willow mentions. "I can't get her soul through the mental shield she has up unless I'm within maybe a few yards of her, and she knows better than to let me close in."

"We need a lure." Dawn tosses the idea in as if trying to be casual, but she's leaning up close to Connor. Bad as it is for Xander, all that's happened, he knows it's a zillion times worse for her. "What does she want?"

"She's a vampire. What do you think she wants?" Sadha's cool tones leave Xander wanting to high-five her. Except she's the enemy too, and damn it all, she shouldn't be in here. "She wants to kill."

"No one here's expendable," Willow hurries to point out. "We can't go using people as bait."

Suddenly there's a noise from Xander's left. He turns to stare at Harmony, who looks downright green. "Yes we can," she says in a tiny voice. "We can use me."


	6. Mercykiller

Disclaimer: Not my characters. Not my universe. Just my story. The rest is Mr. Whedon's.

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Ensemble

Beta: KingofCretins

"This may seem foolish to you, coming as it does from a false and soulless priest. But I want to say the Mass one last time, and pray, even though I know there is no reason I should be heard with a sympathetic ear."

Deucalion rose from his chair. "I see nothing foolish in that request, Father Duchaine. It may be the least foolish thing that you could ask."

-Dean Koontz's Frankenstein: City of Night

She hears the birds singing in the air. She hears the worms crawling through the earth. Harmony hears it all. Like all of her kind.

Summer is fading into autumn, bringing a faint chill to the city at last. She feels it-is aware of it, at least, though cold means nothing to her now. Feels the breeze stir against her equally-cold skin.

She can smell the green of growing things and the moldering rot of bodies beneath her. The first smells good to one part of her; the second, to the other. Sometimes when you're between worlds, both sides are ugly to you. And sometimes...not.

Harmony takes a deep breath. It's such a pretty night, and it's not like she'll get another.

* * *

 _"Harm...no." Willow's voice is tight with strain. They're not friends, not even now, but... "It's not fair to you. We can't treat you that way."_

 _"Willow, think about it. I sucked at being evil, and I suck at being good too. If I get killed, you haven't lost much. It's okay."_

 _"Giles, talk some sense into her. Harmony, you're getting better. I thought you were just trying to copy Angel when you started, but you're in good physical shape, and you're learning. You don't suck. We need you." Giles opens and closes his mouth, unable to get a word in over Willow's tirade. There's no telling what he'd say anyway._

 _"I'm not that stupid, Will. I know what's going to happen to me. I've lost my soul twice already. It's going to happen again, and this time I won't come crawling back, because now I know it won't protect me. I think...I think maybe I'd run. But no one'll help me, 'cause I'm useless, and Buffy will catch up. If she even has to bother. I'm gonna die. At least give me the chance to do something good with it."_

 _"Giles..."_

 _"It's her decision, Willow. She's...Lord help us, Harmony is an adult. And I think she understands more than we realize, sometimes. She knows what her choices are. Let her make them for herself."_

* * *

"I feel awful about this, Giles."

"I'm not comfortable with it either, Dawn. But our options are rather limited, you know." He holds her back, letting Harmony move ahead of them, around a tombstone and deeper into the cemetery. They have to let her out of their sight, no matter how dangerous it is. To use any means they can think of to prevent Buffy from noticing them first. There are contingencies, of course...there always have to be. But the odds are best this way.

"Why did it have to be her that started all this? I mean...why not Buffy? Why couldn't it be Buffy who came back for her soul?"

"Your sister is an independent young woman, Dawn. And rash. And stubborn. And headstrong. Surely you can understand why she's determined to do this on her own. Never mind that it can't be done. It was inevitable that she would try." Was there something he could have done differently? Some way he could have set her on a different course? But even then...what course? Buffy changed the world. It was what she did. It was in her nature not to accept what was. Grim though it might be, was there any better alternative than this?

Angel nods. "It's the sort of thing Buffy does. She never stops fighting, even when there's nothing left to fight for."

"Giles, she never did any of it on her own, not really. She's always had our help. I don't mean...I...she wasn't alone. That's how she lasted so long. She needed us, and she needs us now." Dawn chokes down her frustration. "Why can't she see that?"

"Everyone changes, Dawn. Some more than most. Now...I'm sorry, but we need to be quiet. When your sister appears...ask her yourself. Who knows? Perhaps she'll listen." Perhaps there's a chance. Angel shakes his head silently, but surely the world has gone mad enough for there to be a chance.

* * *

 _"So we're what? Sending her in to die?"_

 _"I hope not," Giles answers. "Anne, you said Buffy wanted to talk...needed to talk. So we will talk to her, those of us she knows best. Myself. Dawn, I trust you will come?"_

 _"Of course I'll talk to her, Giles, but...you don't seriously think we're going to change her mind about anything?" Dawn's eyes stare bleakly at him. "She's my sister, but, well, she's not my sister. She won't listen to us."_

 _"This will all make sense, I assure you. I will get there. Xander, is there any chance?"_

 _"Does the plan end with 'pile of dust'? You want me to distract her, I can do that."_

 _"No, Xander. As I think has already been made plain, staking her will solve very little. We will kill her only as a last resort."_

 _"Then count me out. You're wasting your time, G-man, you know that, don't you?"_

 _"In that case, Mr. Harris..." Giles pauses, gathering his strength. "...why are you still here? Angel? I would prefer to have only humans in this group, but I need Willow elsewhere, and that means we're rather short of close friends."_

 _Angel hesitates. "If you really think it'll do any good, I would like to talk to her again. But Xander's half right, isn't he? Everyone you've brought up so far, we're a distraction."_

* * *

Willow and Kennedy are loaded down with the ritual junk. Until Buffy appears, they can't even start setting up.

"Sure you can't get some kinda foldout thing?" Faith asks uneasily. "Like, nail everything to it, open up when you're ready? When this goes down, it's gonna go down fast."

"I'll just have to float everything into place," Willow says. "Not ideal, it could leave some problem resonances, but it's the best shot we're going to get. I know you'd rather not be on guard duty."

"Hell, any day I get to fight Buffy is a good day." Buffy's always been one hell of a workout. "I'm thinkin' I'll get my chance. This ain't gonna happen like we want, I know that much."

"No," Red says softly. "It won't. Harm's as good as dust already, isn't she?" Kennedy prods her in the arm reassuringly.

Faith shakes her head. "She's got a chance," she says, trying to cover a touch of jealousy toward the other Slayer. "Not a good one, but ya never know. Look...dying sucks. There's no glory in it, none of that shit people talk about. But Harm doesn't think that way. Dying a hero is..." She shifts voices, mimicking. "...like, totally cool, y'know?" The witch stares at her. "How many valley-girls get to do it themselves instead of just seeing it in the movies? Everybody dies. She gets to go out with a bang. Look at it her way, she's kinda lucky."

Kennedy gestures with a candle. "That why she looked scared out of her skin?"

* * *

 _"Yes," Giles confirms. "We're a distraction. We have to keep Buffy busy while Willow performs the ritual."_

 _"Right," Xander scoffs. "Like ensouling Angel worked so well."_

 _Angel bristles, his face shifting. "It worked, or you'd have been dead the first time we met."_

 _"It didn't undo any of what you did before. Buffy would still be alive if..."_

 _"Mr. Harris." Giles' voice has gone cold. "We know your opinion on the subject. You've made your position clear. Since you are not going to help us, I suggest you leave the room. If you would like to create your own plan, we will be happy to hear it...later."_

 _Xander shrugs. "I'll call Deanna, try and work things out. Have fun getting yourselves killed." He squeezes out from between Harmony and Illyria, letting the door swing shut behind him._

 _Illyria turns back to the table, having watched him go. "Grief sits poorly on him. We would have expected such a weight to crush him long ago. Yet he endures it. Will it lessen if we prove him wrong?_

 _Willow sighs. "I wish."_

* * *

"Still say we could have used a goddess on our side." Connor has seated himself on a tombstone and is fiddling with the arm-mounted stake-thrower he hasn't used in years. "We should have brought her along."

Sadha shakes her head, studying him. The child of two vampires...utterly impossible. Or so one would suppose. "Giles was correct. Under the circumstances, we dare not attract Buffy's attention. If we could hide ourselves entirely, that would be better still."

"Too bad that's not gonna happen," Rona says. "I bet she already knows we're here. We shoulda brought more. Everybody, maybe."

"I think not even Buffy would knowingly come out to meet a Slayer army," says Sadha. "Faith, Kennedy, and Angel will all take part in the fighting when it comes to that."

"When? Not if?"

"Much as I regret to disillusion you, Connor, the odds of Buffy coming quietly are extraordinarily low." Sadha chuckles, low and under her breath. "Vampires fight. It's in our nature. And, by extension, in yours."

Rona nods. "We've all got a little demon in us here. Buffy's got more. We just better hope a soul's enough to stop her."

* * *

 _"We need one more group. In spite of everything, it's unlikely that we can hold Buffy's attention long enough to complete the ritual. In the end, I suspect it will come to fighting. At the same time, we have little choice but to limit our numbers. Buffy's enhanced senses will certainly detect us at some point regardless of what we do, so we must convince her that she can win. At the same time...she must be wrong. Angel, and if necessary, Faith and Kennedy, will be present. I need three more volunteers."_

 _"Humans," Illyria sighs. "Always you hope for the impossible. Still...the summit you reach for was our dwelling-place. We shall shatter the limbs of Buffy Summers and present her to you as a gift. Then you may attempt whatever you like."_

 _"Illyria...I may well regret saying this. You may be the only one of us more powerful than she is. Perhaps you could bring her to us alone. Unfortunately, you are also unique. Even the Slayers whose senses are weakest detect you easily. I don't know how Buffy will react to your presence, whether to run or fight...and that is the problem with bringing you along. If we fail...well, perhaps you will have your chance. I'm sure it will be a challenge for you both."_

 _"You would stand in my way?"_

 _"No one can stand in your way, Illyria. Except, perhaps, Buffy. Even when she was human, she fought a god and won. She's more than that now, and we need your cooperation...not merely your strength."_

 _Illyria assumes an unfamiliar expression: a smirk. "I would give much to have seen Glorificus' face. She always believed herself greater than she was. We will gladly allow you to fail, Rupert Giles, that we may have opportunity to succeed alone afterward."_

 _"Ah...yes, thank you. Anyone else?"_

 _Connor's hand rises slowly. "This is about my father. In a way, he started this-sorry, Dad, but you did. I'll help finish it. It's only fair."_

 _Angel shakes his head. "Connor, you're unique too. Won't she sense that?"_

 _"Keep up with the times, Dad. The Slayers who can sense me say I read like a vampire, only not as loud. She'll hear my heartbeat, I guess, but Buffy knows enough to recognize me and know I'm not that special in a fight. I'm good, yeah, but I'm not on the Blue Meanie's level."_

 _"I want to meet her."_

 _"Sadha, are you certain you're up to this?" Giles frowns. He hadn't expected her to come along._

 _"Watcher training methods, from what I've seen, have changed relatively little in two hundred years, Rupert. Most of what you've taught Buffy, I know as well. And unlike the average Watcher, I have the strength and speed to make it useful. Rather than needing to react to her moves, I'll be able to anticipate them, and she won't expect that. I'll survive. I suggest, however, that the final member of this little group be another Slayer. They come closest to matching her."_

 _"Very well...though I suggest you be cautious in your assumptions about Buffy's fighting style. She's never been...traditional in her methods. Rona?" The Slayer had raised her hand._

 _"Yeah. I was one of the first, right? Trained about as long as any Slayer here. I'm in if you want me."_

 _"That will be enough, then. All right...the rest of you will patrol on your normal shifts tonight. Keep your pagers on, however. There is the possibility, however remote, of a true emergency. Tonight we face one of our own. Be ready."_

* * *

She knows Buffy's crypt is close. Harmony's almost gotten used to the idea of Buffy having a crypt. Almost. Of course, Buffy might've slipped out early. Or gone out through the sewers...but they don't usually link up here, they way they sometimes did in Sunnydale, right? Still, Buffy could be...

 _Stop fooling yourself. She's here. You just don't want to die._

Who did, anyway? Obviously some people... Harmony peers around the edge of an oversized pillar tombstone. There's the entrance. This is where Buffy lives now. If you can call it that. She doesn't even have a radio. Or a curling iron, or makeup, or _anything_. Buffy just sort of...exists. No wonder Anne says she's freaking out.

"A month of that," she whispers just before the noose closes around her neck. Her feet leave the ground, kicking. She digs at the cord with her nails, for the first time in her entire existence not noticing when one of them breaks. Harmony fights to call for help, but the air remaining in her lungs can't escape. In all of two seconds, she's hidden among the leaves. With Buffy.

Buffy regards her with those unchanging golden eyes. "Can't even scream, can't even cry..." A vicious grin fades over her lips and away. "Sorry...old times' sake, y'know?" She reaches for the cord around Harmony's neck. "Keep quiet. I can take your head off in an instant, so no shouting and no jumping." Harmony nods, bleakly. It's over. Maybe she _should_ shout. Just get it over with. Buffy's own nails slice through the rope as if it were tissue paper. "Sorry for the surprise, Harm. I've got a lot of time to plan for these things."

Glaring, Harmony responds quietly. "You keep saying sorry. Quit pretending and kill me. I'm ready."

"To die? Harmony, you're not being _noble_ , are you? It doesn't suit you. But you're right. I'm not sorry. I can't be sorry."

"What is it with you and excuses?" She came here to die. Now the suspense is killing her. "Get on with it."

"Fine." Buffy pulls out a tiny box. "I want you to help me."

Super-balance almost isn't enough to keep her in the tree. "Yeah, right. Buffy, that's why we came here. You lassoed me and dragged me into a tree. You're the boogeyman, Buffy. You're the thing that scares monsters. Like I'm gonna believe you're afraid of anything yourself?"

"I couldn't take the chance that you were here to kill me, Harm. You've tried before...not you personally, but the others." She pauses, about to impart some deep secret. "Do you know what it's like to remember heaven, Harmony? I do. It's not crisp or clear any more, but I remember. And I'm never, ever, going to see it again." Shockingly, a single tear rolls down her cheek. "You have no idea what it's like to know that."

"Yeah, well...it's not like you're gonna die any time soon." Something doesn't smell right about this. But why bother faking anything? Why not just kill?

"You don't know that, Harmony. No one trusts me. No one wants me. I hear there are whole demon armies that want me dead. Harm, what do you think happens to a vampire that dies without a soul? Do we go to hell? Or...maybe we just disappear, completely, like a lightbulb going out. I don't want that to happen to me. _Please_...just hear me out."

"I don't know if I can trust you, Buffy. But everyone's down there, waiting. If you come quietly...I'm sure no one will hurt you." Even if they could.

Buffy's arms wrap around her, and Harmony tenses. But it's a hug, a huge rib-cracking hug. "Thank you." She doesn't return it, and after a moment Buffy lets go and opens the box. "These are for you." It's a pair of diamond unicorn earrings...definitely stolen, but still-meant for her.

"Oh, god, Buffy, you know I can't take these." She struggles not to squeal and grab them. "I can't...haven't you heard what happens to me? I can't accept gifts. I mean, thank you, but I'm really really sorry..."

"Harmony...I know it's not easy, but think. For once in your life? If you're afraid of what's going to happen, if you're sad because you can't take them...you're not gonna be perfectly happy. Right? Listen to yourself. It's okay. You're okay. Just...breathe. Or don't, or something. Here."

Harmony reaches out...closes her hand around the box. Nothing happens. She gazes at the sparkly jewelry. Still nothing. "Oh god oh god oh god..." Buffy's being _helpful_. She's acting like a friend. And she's going to come with them and get her soul back. With Buffy on their side they can stop the killing before it starts. It's...everything's going to be all right. Hamony begins to tear up. Everything's...gonna...gonna... "Oh no!"

Buffy's lips peel back in a malicious fanged mockery of a smile. "You stupid, shallow little bitch." Her open hand slams into Harmony's face, and Harmony is spinning backward, backward and down...

* * *

"Giles, where the heck did they...?" Dawn cuts off as Harmony comes rocketing out of a tree to slam back-first into a crypt. "Whoa!"

Giles gathers himself and springs forward, clutching his cross. He won't bring it out unless he has to. "Dawn, pager, now!" He feels his own begin to vibrate against his hip. That'll be signal one-Buffy's been found. Though under the circumstances, it's possible everyone knows. He can hear Dawn's footsteps behind him. She ought to stay back, but he knows she never would, and says nothing.

No sooner has he come to a halt, wheezing just slightly, beside the crypt, than something powerful seizes him by the collar and hurls him away. He sprawls across the grass, coming to rest between the tombstones, and immediately struggles to his feet. It won't have been luck that he didn't strike a headstone; Buffy's aim is better than that.

Dawn is beyond him and to his right, staring at the creature that used to be her sister. Buffy glares, though not harshly, and holds up Harmony, dangling the dazed vampire by the scruff of her neck. "You're all out of your minds," Buffy says flatly. "I keep telling you...I'm on your side. Dawn, what's the matter with you anyway? Running around in cemeteries in the middle of the night?"

Dawn's face screws up as if she's on the edge of tears. "You're not on our side, Buffy, not while you're hurting our friends. You have to stop. You need to let us help you."

"No," says Buffy. "No one can help me now. I wish you could." She holds Harmony a little higher. "Buffy's gone. This is what you're trying to save, and it's you who needs to stop." Harmony dangles there, seemingly human, and Buffy frowns and slaps her across the face with her other hand, twice, until Harmony lets out a low growl and her face morphs. "You can't save this. Not any of us."

"She's a step ahead of you, Buffy." Angel steps out of the night, coat flaring in the breeze. "She has a soul. You don't. No matter what you want to believe, it makes a difference."

"Huh," Buffy chuckles. "It figures you'd be one of the ones who can't tell. Look again, Angelus."

"I'm not..." He stops, appalled. "Buffy, you didn't...you made her lose it. How? No, why?"

"To make a point, Angelus. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. We are what we are. You are what you are, and so is she. And there's only one thing you can do with things like us." She pulls a stake from her pocket, holding it over Harmony's heart. "Either kill me, or help me kill. Those are the only choices you've got."

A coughing sound erupts behind her, followed by a low-pitched whistling drone, and Buffy spins, her own stake disappearing back into her pocket as she grabs the new one at arm's length. "C'mon out, Daywalker. I knew you were hanging around here somewhere." She throws it back, aimed straight ahead and spinning like a football to keep it that way. "Wesley Snipes was better, you know."

Angel lunges even as she throws, crashing into her from behind and knocking Harmony free.

 _Damn it_ , Giles wants to complain, _this isn't the plan._ But it's too late now; the plan has gone to dust as quickly as any vampire. The only part that remains intact is that, hopefully, Willow is close enough and beginning her incantation. All they have to do is delay Buffy long enough.

Buffy has already writhed around to face Angel, catching a blow aimed at her face. "Too slow, sweetie. If I didn't know better, I'd think you thought your lover was still in here somewhere. But I'm not gonna lie to you, any more than you did to me." She forces the hand away, headbutting him at the same time. "It was always you. And I don't exist any more."

"That was _not me_ ," Angel grates, spitting blood from a busted lip. "I'm not going to admit to something I didn't do. If that's the only thing you want from me, it's never going to happen." He can't seem to free his fist from her grip, never mind that her hand doesn't half cover his.

"Right now," Buffy deadpans, "all I want you to do is wriggle." Furious, he drives his other fist at her face as well, only to bury it deep in the ground as she flicks her head aside. "Aww. What's wrong? Don't you get off on fighting me any more? Fine." She tosses him to one side like so much rubbish and leaps to her feet. "Darn. The bimbo got away." She fades left, evading Rona's charge as if the younger Slayer were strolling by, and grapples her around the waist.

"Why can't you come quietly?" Rona argues, pounding fists into Buffy's kidneys. "You wanna slay vampires. We want you to slay vampires. Just not like you did to Anne."

"Last I saw," Buffy smirks, "Anne was still around. Unless you let her roast, but that'd be too much to hope for from bleeding hearts like you. She enjoying being helpless as a baby? I meant her to dust, but when she didn't, I thought I'd just let her suffer a while. She deserves it." Connor comes racing toward them from behind, where Buffy can't possibly see, yet she leaps upward all the same, soaring above the nearby treetops with Rona in tow. "Ciao!" She lets go, lashing out with fists and feet so that both of them topple backward, sending Rona flying into a scraggly pine some yards away while Buffy lands on her feet atop a mausoleum. "Next!"

Giles grabs Dawn by the shoulder. "There's no use in standing around watching this," he says. "We should go..." _find Willow._ But he can't say that. Even through the noise, there's too much risk that Buffy will hear. Connor is trying to come to blows with her, dodging and weaving, but can't seem to get a punch in. If Buffy doesn't already know, he can't risk warning her.

Dawn shakes her head. "What if she notices we're gone? I wouldn't just leave her, Giles, and I won't."

"We need to see if Rona is all right," he suggests. And indeed someone does, at least. "Buffy will recognize that." Dawn nods, reluctantly. They can send in Kennedy and Faith and watch over Willow themselves. Buffy won't have allies. That isn't how she works any more.

* * *

"It's Destroyer," Connor says. "Not Daywalker. What's a Daywalker?" He'd managed to force Buffy off the roof by using her own dodges against her, if only just barely. He's discarded the stake-shooter; the stake Buffy threw back at it must have damaged it.

"Ridiculous vampire movie," Angel answers, working the arm that Buffy ripped from the ground when she flipped him over. "I'd have thought you remembered seeing it. Tell you when we're done working." They're circling Buffy, trying to keep her contained, and he'd feel a lot better about it if the third member of the circle were anyone but Harmony. No...Harm. The soulless vampire that just keeps coming back. Why is she even still here?

She must have read his expression. "There's nowhere left to run," she whines, but she circles clockwise with everyone else, keeping pace. "Not from i _her_ /i. If I help you stop her, maybe I can get away before you kill me."

"They won't," Buffy sneers. "They'll hold you down till they can stuff that soul back in where it doesn't belong. I wish I could see you scream while they do." She spins, lunging at Connor, who stands his ground, brandishing a pair of stakes to impale her with if she comes too close. "You are going to put it back, right, Angelus? Bet you just love watching her struggle and cry."

He hadn't even considered what to do with her. What good would re-ensouling her do, anyway? He'd kept his soul for over a hundred years without coming anywhere near perfect happiness. "Happy" hadn't even been an option for him, but it was starting to look as if Harmony just wasn't capable of caring enough, even with a soul.

He realizes after a moment that Connor is staring at him. "Of course we're going to put it back," Connor snaps, perhaps as much to him as to Buffy. "We don't betray our friends." The young man hurls a stake, pulling out another even as the first spins end over end toward Buffy's heart.

"You've got an interesting definition of 'betray'," Buffy sneers, seizing the stake and throwing it at Harmony. With a squeak, Harmony ducks, just in time to catch the stake in her left shoulder rather than her heart. "Not to mention 'friends'. What we are is monsters. You're no different, Connor. It just runs a little thinner. We fight. We kill. We die. That's what we're for."

Angel glances from Buffy to Harmony to Connor and back. Harmony's pulling the stake from her arm, whimpering and not paying enough attention. They need a distraction. "You don't understand at all," he says at last. "You really believe what you're saying. That what you're doing is good. You've got all the lines in place, but you can't see the picture. But we can give that back to you, Buffy. We can help you see it. If you really want to be good, we can still help you."

"Understand what?" Buffy scowls into the distance, at something he can't see.

"Mercy."

"We're vampires, Angel. There's no such thing as mercy," she scoffs. "Not from us. And not for us." She starts to charge at Harmony, obviously planning to break through at the circle's weakest point, and suddenly Sadha appears around a log-shaped tombstone. For a moment, the former Watcher regards Harmony with unconcealed revulsion, but then simply moves into the circle, reinforcing it. Buffy raises a ridged eyebrow. "Who the hell are you?"

"Shefali was more mature at thirteen than you are at twenty-four," Sadha responds. "I'm amazed you're still alive. Oh, wait...you aren't." She assumes a fighting stance Angel recognizes-though he can't name it, he's seen Buffy use it herself.

"Shefali?" Buffy eyes her cautiously...and then begins to laugh. "Oh, this is rich. Giles is even more desperate than I thought. You were a Watcher."

"I _am_ a Watcher. Whether Mr. Giles acknowledges me as such or not." She closes with Buffy, feinting to her left, but Buffy doesn't even acknowledge the attempt. The circle closes up behind them again...as much as it can, anyway. "I swore the oaths, and I have never been formally removed from the list." Buffy leaps above her attempt at a sweep kick. "Even if he rejects me in the end, I will do what I can."

Sadha sees Buffy's punch coming, but it clips her jaw all the same. "Which is what, exactly? Get beaten up?" The second blow lands squarely in her midriff, driving her backward with a grunt. "I'd say I wouldn't trust you as far as I can throw you." A kick slams Sadha into Harmony, and both of them into the broad side of a tombstone, snapping it off like a piece of thin bark. "But that'd be way too far." Angel starts to close in on her-he sees Connor coming from the other side-and Buffy grins broadly. "You're trying to delay me. You don't have a prayer." She leaps, and Angel follows her into the air, but she soars a foot or more above his grasping hands. "Pop fly on the..."

A black-clad blur wraps itself around her legs, dragging both of them back down to earth. "Intercepted."

* * *

Willow is panting when they find her, speeding through the liturgy on as few breaths as she can manage. "...sufletu la el..."

"Where's Faith?" Dawn asks, gasping a little herself. The battle seems to be moving dangerously far away.

"Already gone," says Kennedy. "She saw Rona go flying, and...she hasn't come back yet."

Giles finally manages to catch his own breath. "I thought I saw someone moving in toward the fight on the way here. I'd imagine that was her. Go see about Rona. If she's all right, help Faith and the others. We need to get Willow closer if we can. Dawn? Take the Orb. I think the rest can remain in place at this point in the ritual as long as it's not disturbed. I'll guard it. Willow, can you move while you do this?"

She nods, unwilling to stop. Good. This is going to be a very close call indeed.

* * *

"I don't believe this," Buffy snarls. Faith struggles to dodge her blows, weaving and trying to get in a few of her own. For every one she evades or blocks, Buffy seems to have another already coming. "I'm a vampire, and you're _still_ the bad Slayer?"

Faith wants to respond-wants to insist that if she's the bad Slayer, there's a hell of a lot more of them out there-but she can't seem to catch her breath. She's faster than the other vampires, stronger, tougher-but she still has to breathe. Buffy moves so fast her whole body seems to blur at times. There's no dealing with her on these terms.

Buffy throws a right hook, and Faith grabs for it and hangs on for dear life, trying to yank Buffy off her feet. She crashes into Buffy instead, but the impact knocks them both to the ground. "Didn't know you still cared," Buffy snickers. Doesn't matter. Now that Buffy's not going anywhere, Faith's got a clear shot. She pounds a fist into Buffy's face, giving it everything she's got.

It's not enough. Buffy knees her in the stomach, thrashing, leaving her gasping for air again. Can't give up. Faith elbows her hard in the ribs, smashes their heads together, and reaches for a stake. "Will if I have to," she warns. "Don't make me."

"Shouldn't need to," Buffy snarls, and sinks her teeth into Faith's neck. Faith's been bitten before; she knows how it feels, what it does to you. She raises her stake, prepared to drive it in, and finds she can't. Buffy's like a vacuum cleaner, sucking the life out of her faster than...like...too damn fast, is what it's like. She...she can't...

Buffy's fangs jar loose as a kick grazes Faith's skull. "Oops." Harmony grabs Buffy by the hair and yanks, dragging her away from Faith. "Sorry, Faith, I-" Buffy's feet come up, kicking Harmony backwards, strands of blond hair still dangling from her fingers, and then Buffy is standing again.

She glances around, scowls...and bursts into a dead run, vanishing almost before Faith can see which way she's going. "Damn," Faith mutters, trying to get her hands and feet underneath her. "She's getting away. Somebody he-" The one tombstone in front of her becomes two, three, a dozen...and then nothing at all.

"Acum!" Willow shouts breathlessly as the Orb flares and vanishes, and collapses against Dawn, crushing her into the side of a mausoleum. Dawn tries to shift her, finds the weight too much after running around all night, and sags to the ground instead.

"Did it work? Is Buffy...?" But Willow shakes her head numbly. The others are coming, drawn by the shout. Connor, who rushes over to her. She waves him away-Willow needs to lie here for a minute or two. Angel, carrying an unconscious Faith. Sadha with her hands locked around Harmony's right arm.

Kennedy appears, supporting Rona. "Got a broken leg here, people. Any more casual...?" She breaks off, seeing Willow. Leaving Rona to lean against a marble pillar, she rushes to lift the protesting redhead out of Dawn's lap.

"Just...just got to rest a minute, sweetie. Better than it used to be. Practice...you know." But Kennedy pulls her to one side, making room for Connor to help Dawn up.

"Willow," Giles says, arriving with a bundle of artifacts wrapped in his jacket. "Did the spell function properly?"

Willow shakes her head again. "She got away. The spell worked...I felt the soul brush by her shields. I bet she knows, but it didn't take. I tried so hard..."

"Nobody's perfect, Will," Kennedy tells her, receiving only a frown in response.

"What's with Harmony?" Rona asks, scowling at the pair of vampires. Harmony turns dull eyes toward her, pouting slightly...resigned.

"She lost her soul again," Sadha growls. "How many times did you say this has happened?"

"Three, counting this one," says Angel. "But we'll deal with that later. We need to get Rona and Faith to a hospital."

"No," says Sadha. "I think we may as well deal with it now." She produces a gnarled stake from one of her sleeves. "She's a liability."

"What?!" Connor echoes Dawn, realizes they're saying the same thing, and lets her speak. "You can't! She came into this expecting to die, Ms. Kaur. To help us."

"For all practical purposes, she has. Look at your witch. She's exhausted, and the Orb is gone." Willow mumbles something and tries to stand. "If this can happen at any time-even in combat-then Harmony is worse than useless to you. She could turn on you at any moment."

"Much as I regret to say it," Giles begins.

Connor interrupts. "Then don't. Betraying your friends just gets you dead faster."

"This is not a friend!" Angel insists. "Maybe it was, but not now! No more than Angelus would be."

"Harm's no Angelus," Rona puts in weakly, "so can we get back to calling 911? Please? Deal with the dumb blond sometime when my leg's not broken."

Harmony's not even trying to defend herself, Dawn realizes. She doesn't even respond to Rona's insult. She's given up.

"I'll take care of that," Giles says irritably, and pulls a cell phone from his jacket pocket. "You should all be aware that our supply of Orbs of Thesulah remains limited. We can only produce them so fast, and we may need them for more important tactical purposes than...pardon me. Yes, please...we've had an incident..." He turns away with a sigh.

Faith stirs. "Stop her...hey, who's got me? This the hospital?"

Willow struggles to her feet, shaking Kennedy off with a murmured, "I'll be fine." She stalks toward Sadha and Harmony, hair bristling visibly despite the lack of wind. Sadha tightens her grip on Harmony's wrist at the witch's attempt to release her. "Damn it, people! What the hell happened to 'family'? Because I thought that's what we were, _all_ of us, and if I have to make a dozen Orbs myself just for Harmony I'm gonna do it! No, maybe we don't get along all that well, but-"

There's a rush of wind, a solid _thunk_ , and abruptly Angel topples over, pinning Faith beneath him. A crossbow bolt protrudes from his side.

"You wanted mercy?" Buffy calls from atop a mausoleum. "There. Mercy." Kennedy starts to lunge forward, but Buffy vanishes almost too fast to see her go.

"Aw, hell," Faith murmurs. "Tell me she didn't use-"

"Don't even say it," Dawn warns her. "Guess it's battlefield medicine 101." She puts her hand on the bolt and yanks it free. "Eww. Sticky. What's...?" Angel groans painfully, writhing as every muscle in his body seems to tense at once. Dawn reflexively tries to hold him down with hands on his side and chest, not that she has any chance of doing so...

And feels his heart begin to beat.


	7. Glimmers of Dark

Disclaimer: All Buffy/Angel characters are property of Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy. I don't look like Joss Whedon, do I?

Rating: PG

Characters: Ensemble

Beta: The inestimable KingofCretins

What may not be expected in a country of eternal light?

-Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

Xander just wants a midnight snack. He hasn't planned anything beyond heading down to the community refrigerators and making off with a candy bar or two.

He certainly isn't expecting to run into Illyria carrying an open bag of popcorn and three DVDs.

"I told you not to-" he starts before seeing the titles. They're not his. _Oh God. Bruce Almighty. Dogma._ "I...um, sorry." It's not right to apologize to her. She...it doesn't deserve his apologies.

"I have completed my scheduled patrol. I encountered one vampire and shattered its skull. The experience was empty," she tells him. "There was no challenge, and I saved no one from death or injury. A human schedule does not adequately fill my time, though I have experimented with trying to sleep. Therefore, these rentals." A cursory shrug, creaking the leathery carapace around her shoulders. "Perhaps they will aid me in understanding my role in your culture."

"Good luck with that," he says absently. "Enjoy."

"I intend to." She doesn't move aside to let him pass. He's not inclined to offer her-it, he means-it the courtesy, either. "Does your continued presence imply that you wish to watch them also? You may, if you so desire. Your reactions may...assist my comprehension. In some small respect, that is."

"No, I..." His stomach betrays him with a rumble. He can't remember eating supper last night, though he must have, sometime or other.

She holds out the bag of popcorn in one slender hand. "For me, eating is one of your cultural rituals. Your inferior biological system, on the other hand, requires nourishment." _Cultural rituals..._ Illyria frowns at him. "You should accept my offer."

Xander sighs and takes the bag. "If you insist." It infected Fred Burkle like a disease. Maybe he should throw the popcorn out. Not so different from what happened to Cordy, in a way. Infected by demon.

She frowns again. "What is it that you...have no right to?"

The question freezes him in his tracks. He's practically naked in front of her. Not because of the shorts and t-shirt he's wearing, but in his mind. She can see how much he hates... Xander tries to turn around and go back to his room with the popcorn, but she grips his shoulder, pinning him there.

"What have you done that you feel guilt-?" The doors crash open. Illyria spins, then sets her jaw, affronted to have been startled like this. He looks over the balcony to see Dawn scurry in, Willow trying to blend into the wall in her wake, and after that... Saved by the bell.

But no Buffy. Why is he not surprised?

Illyria releases him and descends the stairs; he follows in her wake. Willow takes one look, then splits a brief glare between the two of them. She just doesn't get it.

Faith and Rona are missing, and Sadha has Harmony pinned by her left wrist. And Angel...Angel's eyes open wide, he sticks his hand in the bag of popcorn, and stuffs a handful into his mouth. "'S good," he mumbles. What the hell?

"He's alive," Willow says with the hint of a smile, instead of the big grin Xander would expect from that sort of announcement. Then again, it is a little late for it. "Angel's human."

"Dn gt," Angel says, then swallows and starts again. "Don't get used to it," he sighs. Sadha directs a pitying look at the back of his head. "It's just Mohra blood. I'll...I'll have to have it undone again. But I may as well enjoy it while I can." He takes another handful of popcorn.

"That belongs to Xander," Illyria says imperiously, but Xander shakes his head; Angel can have it, if he wants.

"Mohra blood?" he asks. "I must've missed something."

"You were...ah, well, you were out on your own when Angel explained to us," says Giles. "You haven't seemed interested in hearing the details about the regenerative properties of the Mohra. Angel was human once before, but he had that day removed from the timeline rather than put Buffy at risk." The Watcher levels his gaze at Angel. "What I'm curious about is how Buffy knew. I can easily believe she remembers how to kill a Mohra-she rarely forgets such things-but you said the entire episode transpired without anyone except you seeing the blood so much as heal a bruise."

Willow clears her throat. "We know there are several groups of demons trying to kill Buffy already. It'd make sense if the Mohra are too, Giles. You called them warriors of evil. Even though she's evil...sort of...she's still killing their side. Maybe she's had to fight some."

"That's a possibility," Giles admits, "but how does she know what their blood would do to a vampire?"

"With a soul," Sadha reminds them with an oddly significant glance at Harmony. "I doubt it can summon souls from the ether all by itself."

"Doesn't matter," Angel says. "None of this matters, because it's all got to be undone anyway. I'll..."

"Go where?" Giles asks skeptically. "You told me the Oracles are deceased and, apparently, have never been replaced. Surely you don't intend to return to the Conduit? Even if your request could be carried out from there, it doesn't sound as if you were treated well. Would the Powers even consider it?"

"I have to try. I can't fight Buffy this way. We'll undo the whole fight, and this time I'll know what's going to happen. I'll still be a vampire, we'll catch Buffy, and Harmony won't lose her soul." Xander chokes slightly and recoils from her. Never mind that Sadha's hanging on to her; she might let go at any minute.

"Of course she will," says Sadha, frowning at her captive. "Just not tonight. And I expect that you'll let me know about her problem, if you mean to be the only one who recalls what happened."

"Just in case," Willow puts in, "I'm gonna go get an Orb from the supplies. You still don't know how you're going to do this, Angel, and if it doesn't work I'll need to re-ensoul her as soon as I recover enough." She drags Kennedy off down a hallway. Funny how she always seems to take the lead that way lately, Xander thinks; Kennedy's strong enough to resist if she wanted.

"Connor, take Harmony, if you would," says Sadha, all but shoving the vampire into his hands. Xander tries to pull Dawn away-she's much too close, now-but she shrugs off his hands and moves even closer to Connor. "Rupert, we need to speak in private about her."

Giles nods reluctantly. "That we do. And about other things besides, Ms. Kaur. My office, then." Frowning, he moves off without looking at her again.

"You appear to have suffered casualties." Illyria suggests to Dawn as the group disperses. "I told you I should be the one to confront Buffy."

"Maybe you were right," Dawn tells her, unhappily. "Rona broke a leg. Buffy...she took a big honking bite out of Faith. They're both in the hospital. Faith'll be back in action by tomorrow, I think, but bones take more time to heal, even for Slayers."

Connor's not holding Harmony very carefully-one hand around her wrist. Xander suspects he doesn't take her seriously, which is bad, but then, he's had to deal with Angelus. After that, Harmony probably seems, well...harmless. "Angel thinks Buffy's getting stronger," Connor mutters irritably. "I couldn't even get a punch in. She looks...did her face seem different to either of you? All I've seen till now is a picture."

"She's aging," Harmony mumbles softly. "Oh, don't look at me like that. It's her bumpies. They get wrinklier the older you get, and finally your face sticks that way. It's way faster for her than it's supposed to be. In a few years, she'll be all yuck if this keeps up."

"Must be a Slayer thing," Xander says, shrugging. "Too much power, or something." He edges away from Harmony, then reverses course on realizing he's getting closer to Illyria instead. "So why isn't Harm dust?"

"Sometimes I can't believe I had a crush on you," Dawn grumps. "C'mon, Connor. We'll have to lock her up, but we shouldn't leave her all by herself. She needs someone to talk to."

And then he's alone again. With Illyria. Who smiles at him. "You speak plainly, Xander Harris. We find this...refreshing. Few humans show your degree of candor." He sighs, turns, and walks away. The fridge, that's where he was going. He can feel her eyes boring into his back...but she lets him go.

* * *

"I find it disturbing that the Oracles have not been replaced," says Sadha as the office door closes.

"Likewise, and the Ra-Tet as well, and several other cosmic positions," Giles acknowledges, "but there is nothing that we can do about that. I want to discuss your behavior tonight."

She shakes her head. "If you mean my suggestion to destroy Harmony, it was tactically sound."

"Many things are tactically sound without being appropriate, Ms. Kaur. Moreover, while actually destroying Harmony would have been sound, discussing it was not. If you expected to give orders and have them carried out without question, then I must remind you that that day is past. In truth, I think we Watchers lost the right to do so long ago."

"The girl is a liability, Rupert, and a threat to everyone in this building." She paces around the desk and, after studying him for a moment, takes the seat behind it.

"We have plenty of time to re-ensoul her," Giles says impatiently. "She's surrounded by well over a dozen Slayers. And you are in my chair."

Sadha shrugs and stands again. "Would you say that if it were Angelus?"

"She's hardly Angelus."

"What if I were the one, Rupert? I had to lie low for quite a while to keep the Council from knowing about me, but even so, my demonic self was responsible for all manner of murder and suffering." She shifts faces, leaning towards him, speaking softly into his ear. "What if it were you?"

He's becoming used to her tactics; he doesn't flinch. "It is not me, or you. It is a girl who was extremely fortunate to graduate from high school. And yes, clearly over time she has learned, become somewhat more formidable than she was...although that is not saying a great deal...but if she lived a thousand years, Harmony still would not be a threat on the order of Angelus." He pauses, considering. "Or of either of us."

Sadha puts a few steps between them again, her face human once more. "So you haven't gone entirely soft on me. Though perhaps you rate me too highly. I didn't succeed in striking Buffy even once."

Giles shakes his head. "You survived. As far as I'm concerned, you performed more than acceptably in battle. A pity that's not the function of a Watcher." He finally takes his seat. "The unfortunate truth is that I can't afford not to take you on at present. Your skills are more than adequate, your history suggests a strong working relationship with your Slayer, and, sadly, your ethical perspective is no worse than many of the others I've had to accept. Though, after the arguments you made to me..."

"I referred to those of us with souls, Rupert," she interrupts. "You can't compare us to the creatures without."

"True enough," Giles sighs. "I've found a pair of Slayers in Houston who would, I think, benefit from your tutelage. However, you won't be going alone. Officially, I'm only assigning one of the girls to you."

"And the other Watcher will also be watching me."

"That's right." He hands her a pair of manila folders. "I truly hope you won't make me regret this, Sadha. I'd like to believe that you represent real hope for the future...whatever happens because of Buffy."

"You needn't worry, Rupert." She grins gamely at him. "I do."

The office door swings open. "Giles, um...Ms. Kaur," Willow blurts out. "Sorry to interrupt, but we've got a problem."

Fifteen minutes later, the three of them have joined Anne and a bleary-eyed Andrew behind the front desk.

"I was so sure it was Tamara," says Anne. "She knew all about the San Diego coven. Told me they needed extra Orbs as soon as possible for a group of panicky-sounding vampires."

"The camera doesn't lie," Andrew intones a little weakly. "Tamara was never here. It was a glamor."

"So she took them all?" Sadha sounds baffled. "What would she use them for?"

"Unless someone knows a lot more about the liturgy than I do," Willow says, "which is possible but not likely...except maybe if it were a Gypsy, and it isn't...or they've been doing their own research...there's still only one thing an Orb of Thesulah's good for."

"Restoring souls," Andrew states. "Which means we can't really even say she's doing something bad."

"Technically the curse _is_ dark magic," Willow murmurs, "and she is stealing them. But I guess you're right. If Amy's going to do curses for hire, better this one than something else."

"Can we find her?" Anne's tone fairly crackles with frustration, even through the robotic voice of the speaker. "You need at least one for Harmony."

Giles leans in to peer at the monitor and shakes his head. "Sadly, Amy Madison is very good at not being found." Sadha gazes at him expectantly, but he shows her a decisive frown. "Harmony will have to wait until we can fabricate more Orbs."

"I don't suppose there's any way to remove this 'perfect happiness' clause?" Sadha suggests doubtfully. "If you insist on ensouling her yet again, you may as well make it stick this time."

"Tara and I cracked that one the year Buffy died," Willow says, her voice regretful. "There's a basic law of reality, whether you're dealing with science or magic. Andersen's Rule-'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' You can change the spell to fix the perfect-happiness clause, but only if you put in a different price that's as bad or worse. I found a method that just kills the caster, and a few others, but nothing better."

"Then how does the demon do it?" Andrew asks. "I mean, Spike never had any problems."

"Maybe he never found his loophole," she suggests, "but I figure the demon had some ookier price instead. Or...well, I guess it's possible there's an easier way to do it that I haven't found, but...I just don't know enough." Giles shows her a small, affectionate smile. "I guess I never know enough, do I?"

"Keep trying," Giles tells her. "Keep learning. Just...do be careful. Right now, I suggest you sleep on it. We all should. I suspect the days ahead of us may be long indeed."

* * *

"Aiighh!" Dawn's head snaps up at the thud and painful scream. Splashing the last of the water over her face, she dashes back out of Harmony's bathroom. The vampire is lying on the floor with a wooden stake protruding just below her ribs.

"Harm? What the hell are you doing?" Dawn yanks the stake loose, though it's obviously not going to do any more injury. "I'll have to clean this now and..." Tears are rolling down Harmony's face. Dawn looks around the empty room; Connor has gone off to get the vampire some blood. "Harmony, did you do this?"

"I fell wrong," Harmony murmurs, pointing to the bed. "I wedged it in and tried, but I missed. Owww!"

Dawn always used to bandage up Spike when he was hurt. Maybe he didn't need it, but it made her feel like she was helping. She goes back to the bathroom for a bottle of alcohol, taking the stake with her. "Harm, you do know there are easier ways, right?" It didn't take anything fancy; a vampire always had plenty of strength to just drive the stake in. When Spike had tried to fall on a stake, somewhere deep down he'd really wanted to live, but Harmony might be silly enough to think it was necessary. "Why?"

"I can't be bad," Harmony sniffles. "I can't be good. I'm stupid and useless and I can't get away from you and even if I did I'd probably just run right into Buffy." She tries to push Dawn's hands away. "That stuff stings, and it smells _bad_. At least if I'm dust nobody can torture me."

Dawn resists; Harmony can stop her if she tries, of course, but in the end lets her rub the wound with a soaked cloth, wincing with every motion. "Did you know Spike tried this? After he was chipped, I mean. Before he found out he could still fight demons."

"I'm not Spike. I can't be Spike. I've been trying so _hard_ , trying to be worth something to somebody. I can't. I can't." She starts to rock back and forth, whimpering. "Lorne told me a long time ago I was on my path, and I thought he meant I could be good, but I can't. I can't be anything."

Dawn reaches out to hold her still. "If Lorne told you you were on your path, Harm, then maybe you're still on it. I mean, a path isn't something that just lasts a month or a year. It's your life, your whole life, and, um...you can't just stop walking on it because things look bad right now, see?" The wound already seems to be closing. It only bled for a second or two, of course, and that just a few drops. "You don't have to be some kind of champion. You don't have to be Spike, or Angel, or Buffy, or anyone but Harmony Kendall. It's okay to be you." It strikes her suddenly that, in a way, she's older than Harmony now. She's gotten older. Harmony never will.

"It sucks to be me."

"Harmony...I want you to listen to me, okay? Just listen, because you obviously haven't thought about this." She swallows hard, trying to let go of something she didn't realize she was holding onto. "I thought Buffy had changed the world, you know? But she hasn't. All she's done since becoming a vampire was scare people. None of this is...she didn't do it. She didn't make anyone go out and get souls, Harm. You did. Buffy didn't care. It was all you. You made the difference, Harmony. _You_ changed the world."

"No, I..." Harmony stares at her. "I can't...I couldn't have...Even if I did, it's all going wrong. So maybe it was me, screwing everything up worse than it was."

Dawn wipes a tear from Harmony's face. "You're screwing up your makeup, at least. But you know what? It doesn't matter if the big soul movement doesn't last. It happened. You saved lives. This year, this moment, you're making a difference. I'm not going to let you throw that away, you hear me?"

This time Harmony is serious about pushing her hand away; Dawn's wrist pops as she uses a little too much force. "I'll betray you. I can't not. I did Angel, you know."

"That's right. You turned him in to Marcus Hamilton." Dawn smiles. "Guess what? That's why he's alive. Think about it. If you hadn't, Hamilton would have been with the big army. Angel wouldn't have had the big scary Wolf, Ram, and Hart power in his blood, and he'd be a pile of dust in that alley, just like Spike. He lived because of you, Harm. He won because of you. With enemies like you, who needs friends?" Dawn reaches out, offering the hug she wishes she could give to her sister. That she wishes could make it all okay. "You don't have to be perfect, Harmony. I give you my permission to be selfish. That's evil, right? Take care of yourself. Do what it takes to stay alive in the middle of twenty Slayers. And swipe my mascara if you want, cause yours is getting awful runny."

"Don't," says Harmony in a small, tight voice, pushing her away. "Don't hug me. You smell like food, and I'll bite you, and they'll kill me."

"Do you want to die?"

"...No."

"Then be selfish." Harmony is cold. But then, Buffy is too. It doesn't matter. Dawn won't let it matter. She'll find a way. There has to be a way.

* * *

Buffy pats the creature on the head, ignoring the way the small horns cut her fingers. They'll heal. It whines, shivers all over, and pulls away. She can see by the marks in the floor that it's been fighting, clawing to get loose ever since she left. She could hear it as she opened the door. But the moment it saw her returning, it crawled into the corner to cower. Sweet.

"You don't brood, do you?" Buffy says, grinning. Seeing her move away, the creature that, earlier tonight, had been a vampire hunting in her territory, whines and licks up the blood that trickled down its face from Buffy's hand. "If you only had a brain..." It's time to pack, she supposes, gather up what little she has and move. Too many people, too many _things_ know where she's staying now. "Looks like you breed, though. Maybe I should give you to Angel for a present. He should appreciate that now. As much as he'll be able to appreciate anything." Buffy picks up a ruined blouse. Too bad it was her size. If she'd known exactly what would happen...

But it's too dangerous. The demon is still cold to the touch, but its heart beats. Its lungs rasp. It's alive. It might actually, literally breed, and she'd be turning these creatures loose on the world. Hmm... No. Too stupid to be a challenge. "You don't even remember your name, do you, Renae?" The demon whimpers softly. There are claw marks on the lock, maybe tooth marks, too, but no sign that it's tried to reach the key that Buffy left just a little too far away. Angel will be out of his misery, then. Good thing she wore gloves working with this stuff.

No use taking it with her. "C'mere, you." She grabs the chain, dragging the beast roughly over to her, feels for the heart, drives the stake in. It melts into a puddle that evaporates instead of dusting, but either way the disappearance is complete. Good riddance.

Time to be gone.

* * *

"Sir."

The Watcher looks up at his subordinate. "Here to report, I presume."

"Yes, sir. As you predicted, Rupert Giles has accepted her. Worse, it appears that he plans to harbor a vampire _without_ a soul, possibly for an extended period of time." That was significant; there had been rare instances in the history of the Council when it was prudent to work with vampires or other demons, but only briefly, and only for immediate gain. Rupert Giles' actions violated both the spirit and letter of Council law. "Do you intend to convene a trial?"

"What purpose would it serve?" he asks her. "No, I fear that our Rupert has acquired too much power to be deposed by conventional means. A pity he had both Slayers in his pocket when the main body of the Council was destroyed. It appears that we will have to use other methods."

"Other, sir?"

"You have an imagination, Janice. Make use of it." No, Rupert Giles could not be permitted to destroy the Council's purpose. He would have to be taken care of.

"I understand, sir. I will pass your message to the others."

Roger Wyndham-Price would make certain of it.

* * *

"...are reporting multiple incidences of increased gang violence, possibly drug-related, in several locations here in Atlanta," says the reporter for the 5 a.m. news. Sadha has taken to television more than many vampires of her age. She prefers to remain connected to the world. "Sources within the police department have suggested a relationship to the firebombing of an illegal bar in an abandoned warehouse two nights ago. Though the bar appears to have been in operation at the time of the attack, the absence of bodies has investigators baffled..."

She knows this image. She knows this place. Sadha "rewinds", using the DVR, and begins recording, then heads for Anne's room. The other vampire may be the only other person awake so early in the morning, and she appears trustworthy. "Anne," she says through the door, certain she can be heard. "There's something that you should see. That we should all see once the others are awake. I was wrong."

"It's already begun."


	8. Strangers on the Bus

Disclaimer: All non-original characters are the property of Joss Whedon/Mutant Enemy/etc etc. All original characters belong to me. Hands off! Er, well...ask first, anyway.

Rating: PG-13

Setting: Roughly 2 years post-Chosen

Beta: KingofCretins

Distribution: Feel free. Just let me know. I'd be flattered.

"I will show you the fate of the people who pray to the Prophets as gods. But then you must tell me: To whom do the Prophets pray?"

-Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, Star Trek DS9: Millennium Book II: The War of the Prophets

Gabriel seizes her hand and hisses, softer than any human can hear, "Not now!"

"But I want to," Michelle responds in equal silence.

The waitress turns away, yawning. It's an all-night greasy spoon they're in, midway through Nevada. Just as well they don't need to sample the food, only meet a contact of Gabriel's.

"I'm hungry," Michelle states bluntly. "I need to eat if I'm going to get my strength back."

"Yes," Gabriel sighs. "You do. But not now, and not here. You'll get something to eat, I promise." When they're alone, it's different. When they're alone, she's almost the same as she was.

"You're such a wet blanket," she tells him. "Why not here?"

"'There are more things in heaven and earth,'" he quotes, "and in hell too. A lot of them are dangerous to humans, the same as we are. Once, a long time ago, someone made a protector for humanity. One girl in all the world. Something like now."

* * *

Janine's gone to a lot of trouble to make unlife worthwhile. A mixture of threats and bribes got electricity and cable (there's not so much call for running water) secretly hooked up to her new home, no charge. Add to that plenty of choice furniture: a bed, a comfy sofa, flat-screen tv, even a few _objets d'art_ -nothing too tacky, of course. Greg doesn't care much for the vases, but never mind that; he's mostly beefcake, and if necessary a little help handling intruders. There's always someone who wants to move in on your territory.

Someone like the skinny blond girl who just dropped in through the hidden door from upstairs. "It's polite to knock," Janine tells her, more out of habit than anything else. Not many vampires bother being polite, and there's really nowhere to knock.

The blond girl picks up the remote, flipping channels through several screens of late-night movies and music videos. "I like your crypt," she says without a hint of the feeling that ought to accompany those words.

"Very nice of you, dear," says Janine. "As you said, it is mine, and I'd like you to leave. I don't appreciate having guests arrive unannounced." She motions Greg forward with a finger. "It's uncivilized."

With a rush of air, the blond girl disappears. That's the only word Janine has for it. One moment she's next to the bed, and then gone. A rustle draws Janine's attention, and she turns hastily to find the girl near a shelf full of china. Janine almost chokes; she's pulled that trick on humans before, but the tables have never been turned on _her_.

"Funny," says the girl. "I didn't believe Spike about Slayer blood, but I guess he was telling the truth for once." Spike? That Spike? Slayer blood? What exactly is going on?

"Listen here, young lady," Janine begins. She doesn't get the chance to finish; pain spiderwebs through her chest like cracks in window glass.

"I like your boyfriend," the girl says, turning towards Greg.

The world curls away like smoke.

* * *

Everyone's rushing around arguing about what to do, planning, mapping it out, getting ready to fight. Connor has opinions, and he gives them, but he's never been the planning type. He's a doer.

Who are they really trying to save, anyway?

Finally he slips away out onto the balcony of the suite he shares with Dawn. He needs sun. He needs air, and time. It looks as if she needs the same.

"Hey," she says from the railing. There's no way for her to know it's him-she's no Slayer-except that no one else really uses this space. "Got tired of talking?"

"It's all been the same questions for the past hour. Like vampires would put up with being 'protected' by us."

Dawn nods. "Sorta like the fox watching the henhouse? Um, that didn't come out right. But still-I think that's how they'd see it."

"None of this feels right, Dawn." Connor stretches, popping his back, and leans over the rails next to her. "I know what vampires are."

"Maybe more than anyone. I mean, your parents-"

"Not what I mean. I told you about where I really grew up." The real story, or the basics of it, anyway, a little spotty with the false memories that seem just as real. And then the false story too-she'd laughed over that one. She understood.

"Quor-Toth, the darkest of the dark realms. Which is full of little transparent squishy things that drink people from the inside." Dawn screws up her mouth. "Ick."

"Not full of them," he points out, "or an old man and a baby wouldn't have lasted long enough there for me to grow up. But there were plenty of monsters around." She notices the way he's squinching his shoulders and moves around behind him, puts her hands on them. "There are two ways to live in Quor-Toth."

"What do you mean?" Working at the knots.

"Everything in Quor-Toth is...well, demonic. Not everything is just a monster, though. Being smart can keep you alive. There are, sort of, people there. Sort of. Some of them work together, trust each other with their lives, sometimes even lose themselves in the group, because they have to."

"That's what you meant about Harmony, isn't it? Why you didn't want to turn your back on her?"

He hangs his head. She doesn't understand. "Yeah, in a way. It's hard for humans to show demons that kind of trust, though. Especially ones like D...like Holtz. And then there's the other way to survive. The way the monsters live, even some of the smart ones. Steal anything, betray everyone, kill anyone." He stops there, then plunges on. "Destroy."

"That's how Holtz raised you?" He hasn't told her this part before. He can see even beneath her sunglasses that her eyes have gone round.

"As soon as I was old enough. Once he saw what I could do. And I was...damned good at it. To Holtz, anything that wasn't human was hellspawn. It deserved worse than you could do to it anyway." Dawn squeezes his shoulders, and hard. It's barely enough to make a dent. "Let's just say I was pretty messed up."

"I can see why you hated Angel. And why you tried to blow yourself up after Jasmine."

"It wasn't just that with Dad, but yeah...part of. Funny thing. Jasmine was actually when I was finally starting to get better. I decided Holtz was wrong, and she was good, and it didn't really matter how someone looked, even if they had maggots crawling out of their eyes."

"You were right," Dawn tells him. He almost chokes before she can finish. "Jasmine wasn't evil because of how she looked. I mean, maggots, gross, but if she had actually been a good person, we should all have tried to get over it."

"Yeah." He turns around, facing her. "Anyway, I've betrayed too many people to just turn on Harmony like that. Only, maybe I should have. She eats people too."

"So did Angel. And she hasn't, not for three years now. She's been trying her hardest to be good, even when she kinda isn't."

"But she is still a vampire. It's in her nature, like Dad says."

Dawn brushes fingers along his left eyebrow. "You're the part-demon son of two vampires. I was made to destroy the universe. If that's all we are...if we can't be anything but our natures...don't you think we're both kinda screwed?"

"Huh. Maybe we are."

"Don't even say it."

* * *

Willow's not paying attention to the big strategy meeting. She's fielded a few questions, but her heart's not in it. There's something else she has to take care of, and baking cookies isn't getting her out of this one.

"Look, Chad, it's not her fault she's not some kind of dark warrior! Isn't that a _good_ thing?" she says into her cell phone. Willow has priorities. Willow's going to do the right thing this time. If that means leaving the room while everyone else argues, so be it.

"Isn't there some kind of work-around? Can you let her cheat? She wants this. She needs it! We can't go on having her lose her soul at the drop of a pair of earrings! Chad-!" Illyria is watching her, an uncomprehending but tolerant look in her eyes. As if Willow were a puppy nipping at her ankles-not that Illyria would allow that herself.

"Don't make me go over your head, Chad. I can speak to your superior...who? Oh. Oh. I...I'll get back to you. I am _not_ letting this go, you hear me!" She flips the phone shut. "Damn it!"

"Who is his superior," Illyria asks, "and why does this news make you feel helpless? You are...a significant force in this realm."

"Osiris," Willow says. "His superior's Osiris. We have bad stinky rotten history."

"Osiris can be very stubborn. Perhaps he was chosen for that reason. Allowing mortals to cheat death produces insubordination."

"You know him? Would you-?"

"We will not. Cursing a single half-breed is not an effective use of our time. Moreover, you have not considered the import of your own words-that there is always a price to be paid. Has it not occurred to you that the trials, however unfair you perceive them to be, may be the best price available?"

Illyria has a point, though Willow hates to admit it. She glares...then hesitates. "It's not a curse! We're talking about the full treatment here. Permanent soul, no take-backs."

"If a spirit foreign to what you are were implanted permanently within you, would you not consider that a curse?" Her tone is so matter-of-fact that Willow's resolve shatters. Illyria could make him do it, Willow is sure. She could...but she won't. "Why have you left the strategic discussion?"

"Because it's not going anywhere right now. Everyone's stuck on the same couple of ideas. I'm doing something that matters, even if it's just to one person. You gonna drag me back in?"

"That is what I was requested to do. But we concur with your assessment. We have no interest in endlessly repeating the same arguments."

"They're still talking about the same things, then?" Willow sighed.

"I can hear them repeating the same words. They radiate the same emotions, also. If there is something else you would rather do with your time, I will not detain you further."

Willow begins to nod, though she isn't sure what else she can do on her own now, and then something else occurs to her. Something she's been meaning to ask. "Illyria...why Xander? What's he to you? I don't like the way he treats you, but why keep pestering him when he hates you?"

Illyria's face freezes for a moment before she begins, "I have told you that he reminds me-"

"No. I don't buy that. Maybe it's true, but it's not enough, not for you. You're not that...that...petty." The question has nagged at her for months, ever since she noticed what the Old One was up to.

The expression on Illyria's face might be a rueful smile. It might be a grimace of fear. Neither seems to fit the occasion or the ex-god. Eventually..."Walk with me, Willow Rosenberg. I suspect you will understand soon enough in any case. You are too perceptive," she says grimly, and strides toward the stairs.

Willow hurries after her; Illyria never dawdles, except for effect sometimes. "Human myth," Illyria says, "speaks of a time when cockroaches will rule the world. How if you awoke to see that day? If they spoke to you? How if they offered you a place among them? Would you accept it?"

"We're still insects to you, then?" It fits most of Illyria's behavior, but not regarding Xander. "I was kinda hoping we'd made it at least up to amphibians by now."

The blue demoness halts, turning her head to regard Willow curiously. "We might have told such tales of humans. If we had had such tales at all. It was not from you that I fled into slumber. When Wesley spoke of humans ruling the earth, I saw that he believed his words, but I thought him deceived. Perhaps you were the slaves of the Wolf, Ram, and Hart, or of some other. Only in the gaps between us did you have room to cower, in our age."

"You've said this before." It's the same old boast- _You are beneath me._ Illyria never lets that rest for long.

Illyria moves forward again, toward the door to her room. Dawn, she has said, is welcome inside, but no one else. And Dawn has never been in there either. "I could crush you to pulp if I desired," she states, "while you would be lucky to injure me even with your sorcery. Beside my intellect, you can scarcely be said to think at all. Humans worshipped us, and we sometimes deigned to notice you. I am in every way greater than you, Willow Rosenberg, and all of your kind." She opens the door. "Do you see the flaw?"

The red-haired witch stops to peer inside, but Illyria beckons her onward. "Flaw?" she says, trying not to squeak. Fred's bed is still here, but it has been shoved into a corner, seemingly unused. The walls have been repainted in broad, quivering streaks, in shades of midnight blue and indigo, and white flecks for stars across a narrow, ragged band of the black ceiling. No matter how Willow moves, and despite the adequate light, the illusion persists of some dark grotto beneath the earth. Three plasma screens flicker fitfully, their glimmer enhancing, rather than defeating, the image.

"It is not clear to you, then? We had expected better of you." Willow's steps carry her a little further, revealing a tiny alcove behind the door. A table there bears what seems to be a black light lamp, and-of all things-a ragged stuffed rabbit. Illyria clicks the lamp on, and equations scrawl themselves onto the nearest wall in fluorescent hues. "Fred Burkle was your equal, I think. She would have seen it. The fallacy. This room is my domain. What lies beyond its door?" Illyria's voice is taking on an edge, a tone of something Willow can hardly credit. Something startlingly like misery.

"The rest of the world? I...Oh!" Like suddenly seeing the truth of calculus. Or relativity. Or... "Humanity. Us."

"Yes." Illyria bites off the word bitterly. "Humanity. Some hybrids, of course, who bear your seeming. Some who hide their features and mimic your ways. A few monstrosities crawling unseen through your filth. You rule this world." Her fingers wrap around the back of a folding chair, digging in. "Even in slumber, I knew no defeat. I would rise again to grip the earth in my fists. And then I returned to find only dust. My army...my people...my children...my right hand. Gone. Your language lacks words for the terms in which I regarded them." Metal squeals and gives way, and Willow is abruptly not so certain about that last statement. " _I was their god._ And I failed them. I... _failed_." Illyria slumps over the chair. "By every measure I know, I am the strong and you are the weak. Yet those measures lie. I have known failure. _You_ rule the world, and it is I who cower in your shadows. What, then, am I now?"

"You..." Willow licks her lips, searching for words. She has the impending sense that Illyria is about to rip her to shreds. Or maybe kneel at her feet, and somehow that would be even worse. "You don't cower, Illyria. That's...that's crazy talk."

"I bluster," Illyria snarls. "I prate of my own importance. I have become small. I am the insect now, and so I must justify my existence. Yet I humiliate myself further with every word. And you go on your way, pretending that you do not see. Were I truly still what I claim to be, your towers of steel and glass would bow to me as I passed by."

This can lead nowhere good. "No one's pretending, Illyria. I can't tell you you're not less powerful than you were, because you are, and I...I'm sure it must suck. But the people who know what you still are really are afraid of you, and they really do believe you. You're the biggest big bad around, whether you realize it or not. And, well...what does this have to do with Xander? He's human. He's less than you either way you look at it."

"He should be dead," mutters the ex-god. "Again, my measures fail-do you not see it? He is not only less than me-that is a given-he is less than you. Gunn, Wesley-these are dead. His former love is dead, and yours as well. Others whom you have drawn into your battles, all more than he is-dead. Even Buffy, who was your master and his, has fallen. Yet he lives. More, he dares to mock me. He alone sees through my deceit."

Willow attempts to retrieve her jaw from the floor. "Tell me I'm not hearing you right. You like him because he treats you like dirt? Because that's really kind of sick, even for a demon."

"No!" Illyria's composure seems to be returning. "His continued existence is a clue, a key to the power by which your people rule. How else should he remain? We believe he knows this. Once we have the secret of your strength-however loathsome it may be to us-we will take it for ourselves, and be once more supreme in this realm."

"Even though it'll contaminate you that much more? I mean, won't that make you more human?" The witch allows herself a faint smile. Smurfette has no idea what she's getting herself into.

"We are resolved to endure it, if it brings us dominion once more. But you will not allow this, will you? Therefore we must-"

"I'll help you," Willow breaks in before Illyria can do anything bone-crushy. "I'm not sure Xander knows it himself, not anymore. And it's not something you can be told. You have to experience it. But I can tell you this: once you know the secret of our power, you won't be the same. If you can learn it at all."

"I am capable of all things," Illyria insists. Predictably. Once you realize where she's coming from, it's not so hard. "And you cannot deter me. Do not try."

"All right," says Willow. "I guess we'll find out."

* * *

"... _Naanak naam charhdee kalaa_..." Andrew stops there in the doorway, trying to puzzle out the chant. It's not in any demonic language, though, and those are all he knows. Well...those and Klingon. "... _tayray bhaanay Sarbaht dah Phahla._ " Sadha, apparently finished, turns to look at him, revealing what looks like a huge dagger strapped to her belt. This would be a good time to run, he thinks, but his feet seem to be sort of frozen.

"It's called the Ardas," she tells him with an amused smirk. "It's a Sikh prayer for assistance. Considering the task I've been set, I think I need all I can get, wouldn't you say?" Oh.

"I, uh...you had me a little worried there for a second." His throat's still tight. "I mean, I hear some of the girls praying every now and then, but they're Slayers, not...and, um...what's the dagger for?"

She's still smiling. "Ceremonial and self-defense. It's called a kirpan. I suppose it's rather larger than average these days, so feel free to call me a traditionalist if you like. It's supposed to be one of five symbolic things I have on me at all times, but it's been a very long time since I really lived as a Sikh. Perhaps it's time I returned, eh?"

"Since you became a vam-pire." Confidence is starting to trickle back into his voice. That's good.

"No," Sadha says. "Since I became a Watcher. Or close as makes no difference. I started having other things on my mind."

"But you want to go back to it now?" Andrew is trying not to look at her, but she hasn't really furnished the room, or even unpacked. Which makes sense, he guesses. "You, um...have a point about needing help if you're going to be Dena's Watcher. I even turned down Regan when I heard the two of them had been assigned to work together. Being a Watcher _might_ have kept Dena off my case, but I don't think Phil would want to stay here without me, and a Slayer doesn't need a truck to drag you by the ankles if she gets it in her head."

"I see. Well, we can't have that going on, can we?" the vampire says coldly. "That wasn't in her file."

Andrew shakes his head. "Not right out, but if you know what you're looking for...she scares me."

"That's fairly obvious. You really must learn to conceal your emotions if you want to Watch effectively, Andrew." Sadha looks over at the pair of files on her bed. "I don't think Regan would have been suitable for you either. She needs someone to push her."

"Giles wants me to take on someone in Chicago. I haven't had the chance to read up on her yet. Maybe now that the planning's over for the night... What was your first Slayer like? I'm, uh...it'll be my first time."

For a few moments, she doesn't answer him. When she does, she speaks crisply, not so much remembering as reciting. "Shefali was Dalit...what you call an 'untouchable', trained almost from birth to clean others' filth, and to stay out of her so-called betters' way. The Brahmins-most of the native Watchers, in those days, were Brahmin-could barely stand to be in her presence. The British were little better, overwhelming her with more concern and care than she'd received in a lifetime. My family, though... In theory, Sikhs are supposed to ignore caste distinctions. Ideas like that are rarely lived out in practice as well as they should be, but it was a place to start. So they gave her to me."

Sadha gradually seems to realize that she's still standing, and takes a seat on the bed. "Better. Feel free to sit. Being a Slayer was almost a vacation for Shefali, not that she'd have understood the concept of time off. At times, I actually had to make her stop training and rest. I told Buffy last night that Shefali was more mature at thirteen than Buffy is now, and that was truth, but not in the way I meant her to take it. Shefali had hardly been allowed to be a child.. She lasted three years as one of the most dedicated Slayers on record."

Andrew finally speaks to fill the long pause after this. "What happened? Did she burn out?"

"In a way, I suppose she did. The Rakshasa Rebellion...never mind that. It's been a very long time, Andrew, and I don't feel like rehashing her death now. It wouldn't be of any help to you, and I have enough regrets from my time as a vampire. You understand?" He nods to her. She must blame herself somehow. "Is there anything else?"

"Oh...yeah. Sorry. Giles sent me to ask if you were hungry. Wouldn't want to freak out any of the girls." She'd gotten him totally distracted.

"I've already eaten tonight, but tell him I said thank you." Sadha offers a strangely devilish smile. "He's a good man, Andrew. Tell him I said to watch Ada. I believe she's not as friendly to him as she pretends. Her scent...I think Rupert has enemies on the new Council that he may not be aware of."

"He knows. The Wyndham-Price party's all cloak-and-dagger with him. But thanks, and...good luck with the praying."

She goes all game-face on him, suddenly. "I'll need it, won't I? Thank you." Shifting back, she makes shooing motions. "Go get some rest, you young whipper-snapper, and let your elders have theirs. We have another long night ahead of us."

"Um, yeah. I'll do that." Sadha's nothing like Spike, nothing like Angel. Of course not...she's herself, not them. Andrew just wishes she didn't creep him out so much.

* * *

The first sign that something is different comes when he lands on his feet. Last time Angel visited the Conduit, he came slamming down on his side, and that was with vampire agility working for him. This time, it's not even that much of a drop. The exit's still missing, though.

"Hello?" he calls, hoping not to be shoved into the chamber's walls.

"I thought you might come here," says Xander's voice, off to the left, and now that empty spot isn't so empty anymore.

"Looking for answers, huh?" says Willow, sitting on the square block in the room's center. "I guess we can give you some."

"Though in all honesty," says Giles, now standing where Xander was a moment ago, "we thought it should all be rather obvious."

"I don't need answers," Angel insists. "I need you to turn time back, like the Oracles did last time I was human."

"Not gonna happen," says a voice from the block. Willow has faded out, leaving Andrew in her place. "Temporal mechanics is a pain in the butt, don't you think?"

"And, no," says Dawn, "we're not the First Evil. Chill already. You're different now, so we can be different with you. Anyone who walks in the living world is fair game."

"So this place is different because I'm not a vampire? But I'm not your champion any more either, and you need a champion, right? So you need to change things back to the way they were. You need me."

"We've had many champions," says Sadha. "You're not the first."

"Nor the last," Buffy finishes. "Your journey has come to an end. Enjoy your life. It's what you wanted, right?"

"Wait," Angel says, confused. "You're not-"

"Living?" Lilah asks. "No, but that's not what we said, is it? Good thing you never had to argue a case in court."

"It's a free will thing," says Dawn. "Think of it as time share. If you could be totally certain which side you were talking to..."

"...it'd be way too easy," Faith finishes.

Angel stalks around the center block towards her. "Look, we're in the middle of an apocalypse here! It doesn't matter what I want. I can't just sit around, I've got to help stop this thing! I _need_ to be a vampire again!"

"Adversarial," Andrew says.

Willow looks at Andrew, smirking cheekily. "Confrontational."

"He must be-" Xander stops mid-sentence. "Never mind, he doesn't get it. I'll say it again, Angel. Your journey's come to an end. Over, stopped, done with. You're human. It's time to live that life you've been after all these years."

"You wanted a reward," says Buffy. "Now you've got it."

"The shanshu? I signed it away!"

"The shanshu was always something we chose to give you," Illyria tells him patiently, "or not. Whether the prophecy refers to you is irrelevant."

"It's your life," Angel says to Angel, "and you can do whatever you want with it. But we're not taking it away again. Sorry to disappoint you."

"How can my journey be over?" Angel erupts, kicking the central block. "I said we're having an apocalypse!"

"There is always an apocalypse," says Giles with a shrug, "and all journeys end the same way."

A doorway appears in the wall. "Don't come back here," says Connor. "You said it yourself: you're not our champion any more."

The last figures fade away. Angel waits there a little while, hoping for one more word. But there is nothing. Finally he steps out into the sunlight, and the door vanishes behind him.

"That boy," Andrew says, "was our last hope."

Only a faint breeze stirring the dust answers.


	9. If Immortality Unveil

Rating: PG (violence; a bit of nasty language at the end)

Disclaimer: None of the characters in this fic belong to me, but to Joss Whedon.

Setting: Roughly a month after NFA (aside from the frame story)

Beta: KingofCretins

Prequel to DeadWar-the siring of Buffy Summers...

My life closed twice before its close;

It yet remains to see

If Immortality unveil

A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive,

As these that twice befell.

Parting is all we know of heaven,

And all we need of hell.

-Emily Dickinson

"Buffy," she says, and Buffy's eyes spring open.

"Mom?"

Joyce smiles down at her daughter and pats her gently on the arm with a cool hand. "Yes, sweetie. I'm here."

"I thought...I mean, I could have sworn you were dead." Buffy struggles out of the sheets. "I mean...I think...what happened? Is this a dream?"

"Yes," Joyce says to her. "Or no. Does it matter?"

Buffy scrambles up to wrap her arms around her mother, then takes a deep breath. "Only if you were a zombie," she says with a grin, "and you don't smell all rotten."

"Well. That's good to know."

"I think I'd still give you a hug and talk a little while even if you were. If you could talk to me, anyway." She doesn't want to let go, not ever. "I miss you."

"I miss you too," Joyce tells her, and kisses her on the forehead. "But we'll be together again soon."

"Um. You mean relatively speaking, right?" Buffy glances at the bed to see if she's lying on it still, finding it empty save for the rumpled sheets. "Sorry. Premonitions of death-not the Slayer's best friend."

Joyce giggles, white teeth gleaming in the nightlight's glow. "Silly Buffy. I know it's hard on you, being what you are." She tries to turn toward the door, but Buffy clings to her, holding her immobile with greater-than-human strength. "Come along with me," she tells her daughter. "Let's walk a little while there's time. Forget the Slayer and be my daughter, just for a few minutes."

The door shouldn't lead outside. Buffy can't remember for sure where it goes, but not out into the chilly night air. Definitely a dream. Should she know that? She leans on Joyce a little, trying to keep her close. Sometimes in dreams, people fade out and you forget they were there. "Are you in heaven?" she asks. She doesn't really remember what heaven was _like_ , not in the harps-and-clouds sense, just that it was peace.

"No," Joyce tells her. "I'm not. You should know that."

Buffy tries to stop, but her mother is determined to keep moving, and this time Buffy can't seem to hold her still. "I...I mean, right, you're here with me now, but you came from heaven to see me?"

"No, Buffy." Her mother turns, looks into her eyes. "I didn't come from heaven. I miss you. You left me, and it's not heaven with you gone. I'm alone. I'm all alone in the cold earth."

"Mom! You can't...you're not supposed to..." What can she say to that? "I didn't mean to leave, I'm sorry! I thought... What do I need to do? I'll make it better, I...I promise!"

When did they pass through the cemetery gates? The old one, closed and up on the hill? It's a dream, though. They're passing by tombstones, most of them faded with age. Or a nightmare. "You can't fix this, Buffy. There's only one thing you could do, and I won't let you do it, not even to get me out of hell."

Hell? Buffy has no words for this, no quips, puns, or jokes. "I'll do whatever I have to for that, Mom. I can't leave you like that. I can't leave you alone, not in...in hell? Oh god, Mom. How could you expect me not to help you?"

One last tombstone, facing away from the town. And an open grave at its foot. "I can't ask you to come back to me, Buffy. That's not fair to you."

"I can't not. It's not fair to leave you." Buffy swallows and moves toward the pit in the earth. Something...wasn't this...she's not really here somehow... What was she thinking about? "Do what you have to do."

"If this is really what you want, dear..."

"It is. Do it."

"Somehow I thought you'd say that." It's not her mother's voice.

Teeth sink into Buffy's neck like cold needles, drawing the warmth and feeling from her feet, her hands.

The arms that wrap around her waist are pale and cold. Not her mother's at all...someone smaller. Dark red nails carve redder lines across a wrist. Drusilla's nails, Drusilla's wrist... _Wake up, wake up..._ Buffy's arms refuse her commands to shake the vampire loose.

The dream shimmers.

 _Time to wake up._

* * *

Dana jackknifes upwards from the bed, screaming her lungs out. One Slayer each grabs an arm; the third, at her head, seizes her by the shoulders and pushes. "Watch the legs!" "Hold on, hold on!" "Don't let her up!" They wrestle her, shrieking, into the straps that are present for just this purpose and, once that's done, inject her with sedative.

"Is she like this often?" Jennifer is the newest of them at this task, which they rotate out of from time to time.

"She's been getting worse," says Tammy. "Ever since Buffy."

Yolanda nods sadly. "Slayer dreams."

* * *

It's been centuries since Angel slept like this. Sweating. Heart pounding. His arms and legs thrash beneath the sheets.

Through all the long years there have been rivers of blood...tentacled obscenities...demonic forms that stink of rotten flesh or ammonia. Angel has become familiar with nightmares.

This one is worse.

* * *

"Where is she, Dru? What have you done with Buffy?" Angel needs to believe he's not too late. Not that the universe has ever cared what he needs. Tracing her path from Buffy's room has taken two days already.

Drusilla moans softly through her fangs. "Went down like sunshine all the way to my belly. Burning." Fingernails slide down her sternum. "She thought the same of me."

iNo.../i But he can still save her from the rest, at least. "You have no idea what you're playing with here, Drusilla. Where is she? Somewhere in that cracked skull of yours, you must know I can't let Buffy rise." Legend said turned Slayers were monstrously violent and unpredictable. Angelus had tried taking that risk with Faith, once-certain he knew which way she'd bounce-but there'd never been much mystery about what was underneath Faith's shell of control. There was darkness in Buffy-just like everyone else-but far more tangled with Slayer duties and the kind of guilt a vampire could never feel. No telling what would become of her, allowed to wake.

"Why, Daddy? Why must I be all alone?" She stamps her feet and pouts like a small child, sniffling. "First you went away. Then you took Grandmum-took her from me twice!-and let her die. And _she_ took my William from me and let him burn. Saw the sun take him. Saw the dragon too. Sss." Her hand flicks upward to seize him by the throat. "I hear my daughter calling me. Won't let you have her now. Won't be alone again, not ever."

Angel struggles to pry her fingers loose, one after the next. He's stronger than her-always has been-but Drusilla's obsessions give her a kind of ferocity even Angelus was hard-pressed to match at times. "Dru...listen to me, just this one time. Daddy wants what's best for-"

Earth fountains upward, the ground erupting almost beneath their feet. "Baby's awake," Drusilla crows, and tosses Angel casually into a pillar tombstone. "She'll want feeding. Such a hungry girl she is."

Dazed, he lifts his head in time to see Buffy, nightgown hanging askew, sidle up behind Drusilla. Buffy's lips part in a mirthless grin. "Want," she says. "Take." Drusilla starts to turn, smiling beatifically over her shoulder. "Have," Buffy finishes. And buries her fangs in Drusilla's neck.

Drusilla twists, wrenching her way free, opening a great gash across her shoulder. "Baby dearest, what-?" Buffy's fists send her hurtling over Angel's head; he hears bone smack against the marble above him.

Buffy advances on him, her face a mask of fury and dismay. "All I ever wanted," she grates, "was to be a normal girl, damn you." She glances between him and Drusilla, blame setlling on each of them. "You made her," Buffy accuses. "This is your fault." He tries to rise, not bothering to deny it, and she kicks him in the groin. "But you'll keep."

He struggles through the pain, fighting to reach his feet. Drusilla is trying to scoot away on her back, two legs and an arm working, the other held tight to her side. "You're supposed to run," Buffy says, and hauls Dru to her feet by the broken arm. "It's no _fun_...if you don't _run_. Isn't that how it's supposed to be?"

With a snarl, Angel grabs Buffy from behind. "Dru...if there's a shred of sanity anywhere in you...help me. She has to be stopped, now, before this goes any further." But Drusilla only whines and cradles her arm.

"God," says Buffy, and he's surprised to hear the hurt in her voice. "You're siding with her? Against me?" He's hundreds of years old; Buffy is a fledgeling, barely even fed. He's supposed to be the stronger. She twists free of his grip as if he were a child. "You never cared about me at all, did you?"

"I'm so sorry," he tells her. "I tried to find you, to save you. I would never have let this happen to you if I could have stopped it. I'll always care about you. But I can't let you go on like this, either. If that means accepting help from Drusilla...then that's what I have to do."

Buffy shakes her head, denying his words. "I can...I want to hurt her, Angel. I want to _slay_ her. I can do this. I can keep it under control, I swear." She swallows hard. "I feel...I still feel like me. Am I me?"

"No," Angel says sadly. "You're not. And I can't trust you, no matter how much I wish I could. You can't 'keep it under control' because there isn't any you to do the controlling." Drusilla, he realizes, has slipped away through the tombstones. He'll have to manage this on his own. Somehow.

"When you lost your soul the first time," she insists, "I couldn't kill you. Not yet. If you still feel anything for me-"

"I know better than you did," Angel tells her, "because I've already been there. You didn't understand what it meant, not really. I...Angelus wanted to make you suffer. When you didn't stake him then and there, he _laughed_ at you, Buffy, because you were weak. I can't afford to make that mistake with you."

"It really is that simple, isn't it?" Pain flickers over her face like firelight. "Everything's simple. Black and white. Good and evil. Vampire and human." Buffy shivers, and a smile flashes over her lips just as quickly. "It's all so clear. But I can decide, Angel. I have to be able to choose. I don't feel any different."

Angel moves closer, pulling the stake from inside his jacket. "Except that nothing was ever simple to Buffy." He remembers that clarity. They all see it differently...but it's the same experience. "Buffy...if there is anything left of you in there...then there's really only one thing you can do to prove it." She looks up at him as he draws near, expression filling with hope. He breaks that hope, as cleanly as he can. "Close your eyes."

Her face twists, then. Not the rage he expected. Only pain. Buffy roars and slams her palms into his chest, tossing him like a stuffed doll. Marble cracks against his skull, but this time he leaps to his feet. He can't stop, not even for an instant. She's already behind him, though. "You lie," she says in his ear. "I can beat you. I can prove you wrong. And I will." The stake he brings around at her shatters on hard stone. Buffy is gone.

That's how the nightmare begins.

* * *

Simple images

Cain to her Abel, Caleb says

Cain raises the rock, and Abel turns

shearing knife in his hand

always knew you hated me been waiting for this moment you fucker

drives the knife into Cain's guts

Cain is avenged sevenfold

says Buffy

But I am avenged seventy times seven

Faith lies there in the dust

nothing left but dust

a world of dust

choking

bolt upright in bed

"Damn." They just keep getting worse.


	10. Transits

Disclaimer: All original characters, and the DeadWar concept, are mine. The Buffyverse and all its characters belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.

Rating: PG

Setting: A few days after "Strangers on the Bus"

Beta: KingofCretins

"You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also dead - dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou exist - and, in my death, see by this image, which is thine own, how utterly thou hast murdered thyself."

-"William Wilson", Edgar Allan Poe

A blond girl chases a blond girl through the cemetery, and a third blond girl pursues them both.

Dodging through the lines of tombstones, Nina gradually begins to catch up to the pair despite the obstacle course. There are worse things than being a Slayer, she believes, responsibility or no responsibility. _Now if I could just fly,_ she thinks. That'd complete the super-hero package.

The girl in the lead totters briefly as she stumbles over some unseen obstacle, wavers, and goes down. _Now or never._ Nina takes a deep breath and bursts into a sprint; she'd been on the track team before she knew what a Slayer was. Not even most Slayers can match her now.

The first girl's pursuer growls; Nina catches a glimpse from the side as the vampire shifts into game face. Leaping a tombstone, she flips a stake out of the hidden pocket up her sleeve and comes down hard on vamp-girl's back. The twin impact as Nina thuds first into the vampire, then the ground beneath her, jars her teeth, and then she's rolling over to face the demon's victim.

"Thanks," the girl says, fangs blurring her speech just slightly. "Jessie's been, like, nutzoid ever since she got her soul back. It's bad enough having Superslayer Buffy out there without your spawn trying to dust your ass." The vampire stretches out a hand to her as Nina stares. "I've been trying to stay low-that lame pig's blood in bags tastes like tomato soup after a few months, but there's nothing else in this sucky popsicle stand of a town-not that Jessie cared."

"She had a soul?" Nina's stomach turns. Did that make her a murderer? Dazed, she takes the girl's hand and is pulled to her feet. "And-"

"Did she ever!" The vampire overrides her next question. "Couldn't stop rambling on about how awful she felt for like three months. Then she, like, vanished for a couple weeks, and just when we thought she'd walked into the sun she showed up and started killing left and right. Like having a soul made her better than us, y'know? It's been a year since I actually killed anyone, see, what with the big Slayer army deal, but Jessie's all, blah demonspawn monstercakes, die die die, and..."

"She was killing vampires?" Nina leans against a tombstone, trying not to freak out. She's killed a real champion, apparently, and saved Jessie's soulless sire, who sounds pretty dangerous in spite of her valley-girl accent and fear of Slayers.

"Not just vampires," the girl says, "all kinds of stuff. Bunch of wimpy spiny purple demons a couple days ago...an M'Fashnik or two before that...and last week she ate a car thief, two streetwalkers, and a pot dealer. Whiny little hypocrite. You okay? If you hadn't helped me just then she might've got me. I was, like, trying to tell her hitting the jail tomorrow was a stupid move, how Slayers get all pissy when you kill humans, even scuzzy ones, but she wouldn't listen to me. I owe you one. Hey, what's with you?"

Nina just wants her head to stop spinning.

* * *

Tabitha is begging for her life again. The demons in the basement are angry-as usual-and Tabitha's going to have to do something even more evil to stop them from killing her. The witch sometimes seems unhappy being evil, but there's just no way for her to stop. It's too late for her.

Harmony can relate. She's still locked in her room two days after losing her soul-again!-with nothing to do but watch soap operas and drink the yucky pig's blood Willow brings her. There's no sign of the missing Orbs of Chocula (or whatever they were called), and Willow is having trouble finding the consecrated crystal she needs to make more. "Supply and demand," she'd said. Harmony isn't sure she wants her soul back anyway, but it's the only way she's ever going to be allowed to leave. Unless they just give up and dust her.

Timmy begins to make whiny protests about being used as a speed bump. Harmony sniffles. Timmy had always been a favorite of her Blondie Bear. Not many guys would watch soap opera-or admit to it, anyway-but somehow she'd persuaded Spike to try it, and he'd startled her by getting all excited over _Passions_. He hadn't seen an episode in two years, and now he'll never see another. He's down in the basement with the demons now.

The footsteps in the hallway stop, and someone begins to rattle the padlock. Harmony glances at the clock. It's not lunch time yet. Dawn has come to see her a couple of times, but only in the afternoon. She inhales deeply to test the scent, whimpers, and rolls off the other side of the bed to hide. Faith's home from the hospital, and boy is she pissed. Angry Slayer means badness.

"Harm!" The door swings open. "Where the hell are you? You're late!" Late? "Harm, I can tell you're in here somewhere. You might as well come out." Reluctantly, Harmony peers over the bed's edge. "What the hell?"

"You don't have a stake," Harmony mumbles. Maybe Faith means to behead her.

"Not in my hand." Faith shrugs, produces one from a pocket, and puts it back. "I'm back. It's training time, and you're not in the gym. You can't learn to fight watching... _Passions_? That stuff rots your brain, dontcha know?"

"I lost my soul during the fight." Maybe Faith's forgotten that. She'd been out cold somewhere around that point, hadn't she? Harmony stands up, still nervous. "I've been locked in my room ever since. It's a good thing I never have to pee, you know. This toilet doesn't work."

"Right, so?" Faith studies her face. "This ain't a jail cell. Two punches would get you through the door. Maybe four or five through the outside wall, if you wanted to just leave."

"What's the point? They'd only hunt me down. I'd be a...a fugitive, like in the movies."

"Maybe they would," Faith says doubtfully. "Starting to look like a war zone out there at night. But I guess they might."

"You think they'd let me go?"

"I wouldn't. I told you-you're late for sparring practice. You've actually been makin' some progress lately, and I'm not gonna let you backslide. Maggot." Faith winks at her. "Maggot" is some kind of joke on Kennedy; Faith never really uses it during training.

"Um, maybe you didn't hear that-"

"I heard." Faith sits down on the bed. "But here you are. Like I said...you coulda been gone by now. If that was what you wanted. And the day you get good enough to take me, I'll have blue hair and bifocals, so no...not worried."

"Maybe when Willow gets an Orb finished, we can-"

"No," says Faith. "Now. Look at me, Harm. I'm a killer. I belong in jail, or dead. But I'm not. You know why? Cause someone took a chance on me. It's time I passed the favor on." She tosses the padlock to the floor. "You're out of solitary now."

With a faint shiver, Harmony steps around the bed. "Angel isn't going to like this."

"Angel," says Faith, "can kiss your vampire ass." Harmony giggles nervously in spite of herself. "Your soul will keep. Hell...maybe you'll get it back yourself, make your Blondie Bear proud."

"What, a zillion years from now?"

"You got plenty of time."

* * *

They walk into Club Gremarye like they own the place, three vampires in leather pants and studded jackets. There are demon bars where that look might work; this isn't one of them. Patrons clad in tuxedos and evening gowns gawk at them. Here, elegance rules the night, a glittering veneer over bloodlust and carnage.

"Can I help you, sir?" the hostess asks archly. They are obviously young, and would be lucky to be thrown out on their ears. This is a place for older vampires with a taste for luxury, and for their few favored pets.

"Yeah," the foremost of them sneers back, hefting a sawed-off shotgun. "You can die."

The hostess fights the urge to roll her eyes. "Sir, you should know that won't-" The blast takes her head off, spattering the nearest table with her dust.

"This one's for Eddie, you soulless fucks!" The middle intruder produces an incendiary grenade from beneath her jacket, hurling it away across the aisle. "Stinkin' monsters think you can get away with blowing up our kind? Got no guilt about killin' you proper this time!"

Clubgoers blur into motion, diving beneath tables or racing to toss the grenade away (even as more began to arc through the air) or charging towards the invaders. The shotgun booms again, then clatters as its wielder reloads it at superhuman speed. The third of the group has produced flares by this time, covering his gun-toting ally with sputtering streams of orange fire. A dangling cage's chains rip free as a stray burst of shot strikes the ceiling; the human victims inside shriek briefly as it drops onto the table below, smacking bones against metal bars.

"You ain't nothin'!" The grenade-thrower's supply exhausted, she ducks back through the door as the first of the charges go off, spraying the room with light and heat and the sharp stink of thermite. A dozen vampires, caught too close, char to ash in an instant. Half a dozen more go down flailing at their burning clothes. The two remaining intruders begin to retreat toward the door as well, intent on escaping before the entire building catches fire.

Rationally speaking, the souled invaders ought not to get away. By this time, though, no one in Club Gremarye is thinking rationally. Caught in a twilight haze of instinct and self-preservation, the majority of them blunder toward the nearest exits or away from wherever they feel too much heat. Compared to the single, unexpected blast that had taken out Lois' bar, the casualties are surprisingly low; doors may be lost in the smoke, and night vision blinded by the infrared glare of fire, but when all else fails a vampire can batter its way through the walls.

Forgotten in the chaos, the humans intended for that night's meal roast screaming in their cages.

* * *

"What's he doing here?" Anne's electronic voice buzzes and rasps amidst the everyday sounds of dinner at the mission. "I specifically told you not to bring him, Willow."

 _Right_ , Xander thinks gloomily. _Soul or no soul, she's hiding something from me._ She'd been a nice girl once, if not very clueful, and it's a shame she's ended up this way. Still...he can put up with one vampire in order to serve homeless people their soup.

"Anne, you can't run this place by yourself from a wheelchair." Willow sounds more reasonable than she has lately, perhaps because there's nothing strictly supernatural about Anne's current problem. Except Anne herself. "Especially not when you're stuck inside in the daytime. You need help, and Xander needs to be here. I'll keep him from making trouble, I promise."

Why would he make trouble? He's promised-very, very reluctantly-not to try staking any of the vampires who were helping out with the slaying, so long as they have souls and continue to be useful. Maybe Anne doesn't fall strictly into the category of Watcher/Slayer-assistant, but a place like this...well, it's worth keeping open regardless. People have to eat.

"You'd better," Anne grumbles, turning her chair and whirring off toward a table without another word.

Xander looks up, expecting to see Willow glowering at him, and promptly drops the ladle into the soup kettle. The next girl in line isn't exactly a girl. For a moment, his brain screams _vampire_ , fooled by the brow ridges. But they're smooth, not corrugated, and the girl's face is a muddy grey color he's never seen on anything living or undead. Combine that with the effect of her emaciated frame, and he's looking at death walking. Maybe literally. A demon might be anything, do anything, no matter how helpless this one seems.

She watches him drop the ladle, and her face falls too. She slumps, hopeless, against the table. If she's getting ready to tear him apart, she has a funny way of preparing for it. Before he can say anything, the demon gathers herself and looks into his eyes. "Please, I just want some food. Please."

The line is backing up. The nearest volunteer-a large black man carrying a new canister of tea-glares at Xander as he sets it down. "Serve or get out of the way," he growls under his breath. "Nobody goes hungry here."

"Nobody, huh?" The truth is, he was about to pick up the ladle again, but now Xander feels defensive. "Not even demons?"

The other assistant rolls up his sleeve, revealing bite marks. "Couple weeks ago, Buffy barges into LA, shakes up the food chain in vampire town. Folks at the bottom rungs got kicked off the regular channels. This's from Miss Anne. You need food around here, you ask nice and you get it. End of story."

"And if it'd been a vampire _without_ a soul?"

"It asks nice, we get bags and take up a collection. Ain't none of them asked nice yet." There's impatience building up in his voice. "I told you. Serve or get out of the way."

Xander looks back at the line. The demon girl has begun unbuttoning her threadbare blouse. "I'll pay," she whispers. "If you won't feed me, at least feed my daughter. I can pay you if you want."

He swallows hard. Even if she were human, there's nothing there he's interested in. "No need," he mumbles guiltily, and scoops up a generous helping of soup. "Sorry for the trouble."

The big assistant picks up an empty canister. "Good. Don't go losin' the mission, bro. More tea!" What was that about? Xander shrugs, baffled, as the other guy carries the canister away.

Willow pushes her way through the line and behind the table. "What do you think you're doing?" she hisses. "These people are hungry, and they're waiting."

"Sorry, Will...bit of confusion there." He keeps scooping, trying to hurry. "No offense intended, but-what are they?"

"Refugees," she says testily. "This group's from the Ozarks, they're just passing through on their way out of the country. Things got too hot in Arkansas. Yes, they're demons. Lister demons are totally harmless. They've been persecuted for centuries because they're too close to human. Think on that next time you're tempted to hold up the line 'cause of someone's face."

Xander flushes red. "They're why you wanted me here. And why Anne didn't."

Willow nods, still glaring. "Think you can treat them like people? Or are they just so much walking garbage to you?"

"I..." Xander ladles out another helping of soup. "Sorry, Will. I...I've been a real pain lately, haven't I?"

She sighs. "I'll go tell Anne she was wrong." Willow turns to leave. "You've got a soul after all."

* * *

Some soup kitchens make the Smooth'n'Easy look upscale. Enid sneers at the pathetic excuses for vampires lined up at the doorway tonight. There are those who say animal-feeders are the lowest of the low; she begs to differ. These creatures have prey in their grasp and let it go-not to toy with it, most nowadays not even to preserve their food supply, but to assuage their oh-so-guilty souls. Slinking filth, and hypocrites as well.

Enid draws forth her blade, and watches her band of warriors follow suit. "I need tell none of you of the threat these creatures represent to us. Not only to our existence, but to our purity, for they expect us to follow in their trail. I say we will not bend nor bow to the demands of the ensouled or their Slayer champion." There is a brief chorus of subdued cheers. "We will not let another weak fool like Edwin strike us down. We will drown them in their own cowards' blood." More cheering. Some of the scum on the street below begin to look up. No more time for speeches.

"Smite, stab, and slay!" Enid shrieks, and leaps from the roof. Tonight is going to be _fun_.

* * *

"Angel." No response. "Angel," Giles repeats, "I really do need to speak with you."

Angel raises the bottle of beer and takes another swig. "Not sure who you're talking to, Giles. No one here by that name."

A few days ago, Giles might have responded badly to that announcement. Now... "I must confess I have no idea what you're talking about."

"The truth of the matter, Giles, is Angel's dead." He rises from the bench and paces to the trash can, dropping the empty bottle in, then heads back. Giles steps between him and the bench; Angel lurches to a stop just before the two can collide. "I'm not Angel, Giles. He died in that graveyard. I'm just a guy who was supposed to pass on a couple of hundred years ago."

"Yet here you are." Giles slides the carton away as Angel reaches for another bottle. "You're not dead, and this fight is not over."

Angel scoffs. "It is for me." He tries to step closer to the beer and bumps into Giles, who takes him by the shoulders and shakes him roughly.

"I was given to understand Liam enjoyed a good fight. If you were Liam, you wouldn't walk away from this."

Angel tries to shove Giles aside; too unsteady on his feet, he loses his balance and sits down hard on the bench again. "This isn't a bar brawl. It's a war. Never cared much for those."

This time when he reaches for the beer, Giles shoves the carton away. It skids off the table, crashing to the linoleum in a puddle of glass and alcohol. "Call yourself what you like, Angel. You cannot simply walk away from this, nor may you drink yourself into a stupor at my expense. Does Buffy mean so little to you? Does humanity?"

The former vampire glares up at him through bloodshot eyes. "I'm the man who became Angelus. What do you think?"

"I think that you are a good person. I think you still have skills that would be worth a great deal to the world, could you only be bothered to use them. I think you're too important to be drinking your new life away in a communal dining hall." Giles sighs. "But perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps I'm wasting my time. A Watcher has to be more than some common sot."

Angel begins to choke out laughter. "You've got to be kidding."

"You have more experience with the demon world than almost anyone alive, Angel. Or Liam, if you prefer. You have knowledge, you have skill in a fight, and you know how to train others. It seems you prefer not to use it. I suppose we'll just have to leave this one to Wolfram and Hart."

Finally. Angel peers up at Giles with something like curiosity. "She wants to work for Wolfram and Hart?"

Giles shrugs. "I'm honestly not certain what Brittany wants. They seem to want her, and she appears to prefer law school to fighting demons."

"So she's just going to ignore her calling?" From Angel's frown, that possibility seems to genuinely disturb him.

"If someone doesn't get her attention, I suppose she will. I've been unable to get through to Brittany, but you might reach her. You know what it's like to waste away in an office when you were meant for something more." He retrieves the folder he'd left on the counter and hands it over, open to a picture. "Besides...I believe you knew her Aunt Lilah."

* * *

"It doesn't have to be like this," Gabriel says, concentrating on the road. Without headlights, he'd be able to see much better; the contrast interferes with his night vision. It's getting late, though, and he doesn't want to be pulled over. Still being on the road at sunrise would be problematic.

"What if I like it this way?" Michelle asks dubiously. "Look, I know you'd never have woke me otherwise, but you've got to get over this fear of violence. What's a soul, really?" She flicks on the radio, searching for music.

Gabriel sighs. "I hope you'll find out one day. In the meanwhile, look yourself over again. I want you to have a chance at living, Michelle, not get turned to dust because you got into a fight you couldn't handle. You're still too weak for that kind of life." The sky is starting to lighten. He needs to find them a motel soon.

"So where's this magical place where everything's _safe_?" Her voice is filled with a scorn he's never heard from her before. She'll learn.

"From what I've heard?" He takes the next exit. "Chicago." Let her chew on that awhile.

* * *

Screaming like a banshee, Harmony hurtles out of the air at Faith, fists up and ready, and comes down square on the stake.

With a dismayed gasp, she rolls sideways and topples to the floor, not expecting to land. Naturally shes not prepared to land solidly-and solid-on her butt. Can't she even die right? There's a grinding pain radiating out of her chest, and after a few more moments of that she reaches up and took hold of the stake. It feels like plastic, and she yanks it out. The wound doesn't close right up, not like the time she had that neat ring, but it starts to heal.

"Harm," Faith says impatiently, "how many times have I told you to quit worrying about your damn acrobatics until you have the basics right?" She plucks the fake stake out of Harmony's fingers. "You told me you wanted to learn to fight the right way, so I'm gonna teach you. This point, I'm thinking that means consequences when you screw up."

"Y-you staked me!"

"Good grasp of the obvious, which means _you're still in one piece_. Coulda been the real thing, you know?" Faith hauls her to her feet. "Two things, then-first, you gotta quit jumping around. Maybe one day, when you've got your head straight, that shit'll give you an edge. Right now, it's just an opening for the other guy. Second, where's your game face?"

"It's not real," Harmony says. "We're just sparring. I don't have to look intimidating, and it's not like I need to bite you or anything." Faith rolls her eyes.

"Oh yes you do." Harmony stares at her, dumbfounded. "Let's get something straight, Harm. Every fight is real. You may be hard to kill, fine. But you can break an arm or a leg, you can get your chest caved in, and yes, you can even get staked or have your head cut off. I'm not gonna kill you, not on purpose, but anyone can have accidents, even a vampire, and even a Slayer. And since every fight is real, you use the weapons you've got. You've got fangs. Get them out. You don't have to try to bite me every second, but you can make me worry about it."

Harmony vamps out, still looking just as confused. "I didn't think you'd want me to."

"And that matters to you?" Faith frowns. "I wouldn't have...hey, third thing, no cell phone." An inappropriately-merry ring tone emanates from Harmony's pocket.

"Sorry," Harmony says. "But in a real fight, I'd have my cell phone in case of emergency. Who's that?" She peers questioningly at the display. "Hello?"

"Yeah, but you wouldn't _answer_." Faith gives up. "Who is it?" Harmony's eyes are wide, her hands shaking. Game face or no game face, she looks about as scary as a rabbit running for cover.

"That's right," Harm says in her best confident voice. "I'm still here." She pokes awkwardly at the volume button, still trembling.

Buffy's voice emerges from the speaker, quiet but perfectly recognizable. "Wow. How many of them did you kill?" The tone carries a malicious sort of excitement. "I didn't think you had it in you. Of course, if you hurt Willow, Xander, Giles, or Dawn, I'll have to pay you back extra. Only fair, y'know?"

"I didn't kill any of them. I mean, I thought Ms. Kaur was gonna stake me, but...Buffy, they haven't tried to hurt me at all. Except Faith, and I asked for that. We've been trying to tell you it'd be that way, Buffy. Just...come home."

"They really have you tamed, don't they? At least, they think so."

Faith's had enough. She grabs the phone out of Harmony's hand, producing a squeal of protest. "Damn it, B, if you thought she was dead why'd you call her number? Why the hell can't you leave us alone?" The display shows that Buffy's calling from another cell phone-probably one she's taken off a vampire.

"Now there's a voice I expected to hear." Buffy's voice is all oozing malice now; the excitement has vanished. "She says you hurt her. And she asked for it. Being Li'l Miss Vampire Abuser, are we? You always said you wanted to boink the undead, but _Harm_? Don't you think that's kinda tacky?" Harmony makes a face; evidently she thinks so.

"I'm training her to fight. She's gonna show up at your crypt one day and knock you on your ass, B, and the rest of us will be right behind her."

"Please. The day that happens...well, there won't be any such day. Are you still keeping Angel around? I bet he's more fun now that he's all demon. Too stupid to brood any more, by the looks of this chick I tried the blood on."

"Huh?" Faith stares at the phone. "Buffy, he's human. You made him human."

A strangled noise emanates from the speakers. " _What?_ No, dammit, he said 'fate worse than death'! He promised me! He even threatened me with it!" Buffy snarls over the phone; a burst of static erupts. And then nothing. The connection has vanished.

Faith hands Harmony the phone; the vampire looks a little green. "So much for mercy," Faith mutters.

"No," Harmony says, shaking her head. "I...I think she meant that part too. In...in her way."

Faith looks at her, not showing whether she understands. "Well, now what do we do?"

"You don't look much like Charlize Theron," Harmony says with a shrug. "But I guess we get back to the vampire abusing." Faith blinks stupidly, and Harm smiles. For once, she's caught Faith off guard. "It's a thing. I'll explain sometime." Her game face appears again; Faith missed seeing when it vanished. "I wanna be ready. Let's fight."

* * *

"Take 'em down," the vampire leader snarls. She isn't looking at Laura or Kirsten, but beyond them at the smaller group of vampires huddled against the alley wall. Kirsten thinks she looks about ten years old, but from the clothes, and the aura of her power, the girl might be about three times that. She has that eighties look about her. Plus she's been leading a ragged chorus of "Kill the Beast" from the Disney movie, apparently without any awareness of the irony involved.

"No," Kirsten says again. "Leave them alone. They haven't done anything to you."

"To us?" The girl snickers. "That doesn't matter. We don't matter. They feed off humans. Well, we burned their nasty little place to the ground. They're next," she finishes, waving her torch menacingly.

"Kirsten," Laura says worriedly, "maybe they're right. Those two..." She points at two of the rearmost vampires they were standing in front of; the pair try to squirm further behind the rest. "They don't even have souls. I think you might be defending the wrong side."

"They haven't been hurting anyone," Kirsten tries to explain. "They drink bagged blood, when they can get it, and pay for it. They don't kill anyone when they feed. And they aren't the ones waving torches and burning down buildings. These...they didn't even know if there were humans inside."

"They drink human blood!" someone shouts from the back of the mob. "They're monsters and they don't even care!"

"We care," whines one of the cornered vampires unhappily. "You're using all the butcher's blood in town." If the mob hears, they don't show it.

"Kirsten..." Laura says insistently.

"They're out of control," Kirsten insists back. "You don't know what they'll do next."

"I know what they're doing now," Laura responds. "And as bad as it looks...I think it's the right thing." She steps forward and takes a torch. "If you won't help, then get out of the way."

"Up the wall," Kirsten murmurs, hoping the trapped vampires will take her meaning. She's seen it done before. Then she moves into Laura's path. "No," she said. "I won't."

* * *

The road stretches on into the distance ahead of her. Highways...such a marvel. Highways and cellular phones. Sadha opens hers and dials. "Good _e_ -vening," she intones theatrically.

"And a good evening to you, Mistress," Ravensdale responds, the coded exchange demonstrating that he's alone. Sadha listens closely for background noise, but there's no real need. Of course, she's told him not to call her "Mistress", but that never seems to take, somehow.

"I've been assigned, Ravensdale. Lure him out. Tell him I'm in Houston, if you think that will make him bite." Using the fellow like this is unpleasant, but it's all for the greater good, and never mind how painful it is to look into Ravensdale's eyes and tamper with his will. Never mind how it hurts to hear the worshipful tone in his voice. It has to be done.

"It may, Mistress. Mr. Wyndham-Price is most interested in you."

"He wants me destroyed, Ravensdale, but he doesn't have to do that in person. It'd be foolish, in fact. You need to give him a reason. You're a smart fellow. Come up with something."

"I'll tell him you have acquired the Helm of Kasparov. He has a personal interest in that one himself." The Helm is one of a number of objects of power that has been lost...sometimes deliberately, because of the danger they pose to the world.

"That should do the job. Thank you, Ravensdale. You're a good man."

"I live to serve you, Mistress." And he does. He does. Sadha shuts the phone off with a wince. Sometimes you just have to...what is the phrase? Bite the bullet.

She puts the pedal on the floor and heads east. Toward the sun.

How fitting.


End file.
